Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie was a French historian whose work primarily focused on the history of the peasantry in Languedoc during the Ancien Régime. His extensive scholarship is characterized by a deep interest in the daily lives and social structures of the past. Ladurie employed meticulous research to bring the past to life, offering readers insights into the experiences of ordinary people. His approach to history has been influential, inspiring many other scholars to explore the less-documented aspects of historical events.
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie is recognized as a highly original and imaginative historian, celebrated for his versatility over the past two decades. His work has garnered significant acclaim, particularly noted by Lawrence Stone in the New York Review of Books, highlighting his impactful contributions to the field of history.
"This collection illuminates the work of a truly remarkable scholar....singularly enjoyable and intellectually stimulating." - IAIN STEVENSON. Journal of historical Geography. "Exhilarating and humane." NICHOLAS HYMAN, Tribune. "No one has secured such international eminence nor has enjoyed such wide popular appeal... His particular virtuosity centres upon his readability, his superb imaginative talents and an uncanny knack of being to the fore of changing historical fashion. Sex, violence, religiosity, village sociability, climatic change, famine, sterility, literacy, death are but a few of the subjects he has explored in a dazzling career and which are reflected in this book." - OLWEN HUFTON, The Times Higher Education Supplement. "Any new book by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie is an event." - DOUGLAS JOHNSON, New Society. "An ingenious and successful combination of narrative and analysis, micro-history and macro-history...reveals the immense intellectual appetite of Le Roy Ladurie...." - PETER BURKE, New Statesman.
An Essay in Comparative History
Focusing on the tithe, this book explores its significance within the agrarian ancien regime, particularly in pre-1789 France. It delves into the historical implications of this levy, providing insights into traditional societies and their economic structures. Historians will find the examination of the tithe's role in shaping social and economic dynamics both informative and engaging.
Presents an account of day-to-day life in a medieval French village. Using records gathered by the Catholic Church in its pursuit of heretics, this book shows the lives of a cast of village characters.
Hailed as a pioneering work of "total history" when it was published in France in 1966, Le Roy Ladurie's volume combines elements of human geography, historical demography, economic history, and folk culture in a broad depiction of a great agrarian cycle, lasting from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. It describes the conflicts and contradictions of a traditional peasant society in which the rise in population was not matched by increases in wealth and food production. "It presents us with a great study of rural history, an analysis of economic change and a description of a society in movement that has few equals." -- Washington Post Book World "It is without any doubt one of the most important, if not the most important, monograph of the French Annales school of socio-economic historians written in the last decade." -- Canadian Historical Review