Word: montaillou
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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French Historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie managed a singular coup last year. His book Montaillou, a painstakingly detailed account of life in a small French town in the Pyrenees at the beginning of the 14th century, became a surprise bestseller. But then, Montaillou was a singular town. The curious beliefs, the robust lives and the sexual proclivities of its townspeople, revealed through the testimony in their subsequent heresy trials, afforded an intriguing peephole into another time...
This is, as Le Roy Ladurie senses, the stuff of old drama with modern resonances. Yet Carnival in Romans is no mere clone of Montaillou: it is a more demanding work-a long day's journey into light. In that sense it is a braver book. The author dares, for example, to spend the entire second chapter talking about taxes. He cannot do otherwise. If sex and its avoidance preoccupied Montaillou, taxes and their avoidance seem to have preoccupied Romans and the countryside around...