A Passion for History: Conversations with Denis Crouzet (review)

Few historians have been as consummately and consciously interdisciplinary and innovative as has Davis, a long-time member of this journal’s board of editors. Responding to Crouzet’s suggestion that historical inquiry is appropriately “cross-pollinated” by other scholarly disciplines that serve as “fertile sources of creativity,” Davis adds that ideas from other disciplines help to suggest where historians should look. “We set up a back and forth,” she writes, “between our sources and these new sets of questions—yes, a kind of cross-fertilization” (49).

In another part of this delightful set of prolonged conversations, Davis, whose path-breaking publications have ranged across centuries, continents, problems, and genres, chides her interlocutor, “A book is not a lesson.” In her work, she has two goals in mind: (1) that readers become interested in the historical inquiry, be amused and saddened in appropriate turn, and be captured by the “possibilities of the past,” and (2) that readers become aware that her interpretation is not the only one. Davis calls her style of writing a “dialogue,” placing her in enlightening conversation with such long-dead subjects as al-Hasan al-Wazzan (Leo Africanus), Marie de l’Incarnation, Christine de Pizan, Martin Guerre, or any of the other fascinating individuals (many on the margin) who have had her historical ear. Davis also defends her use of the conditional tense to indicate what her subjects, some of whom left few archival traces, might have been thinking or might even have done. Speculation is acceptable, she says, if it is well-grounded in probability and in a historian’s firm grip on the period, the context, and the individual.

Davis entitles the first chapter of this engaging book “Wonderments,” expressing her feeling about communing intimately with the past. She also cautions historians to be humble toward the past “that beckons us.” Historians do not have the power to understand everything; they must remain appropriately detached and certainly not romantic about their discoveries.

Almost every page in this book contains words of wisdom and of fascination, particularly for historians entering the field who are wondering where to begin. But more mature historians will also learn from Davis’ reflections on what she has done and why she has traversed, even hop-scotched, the historical fields in the adventuresome manner that she has adopted. Davis has been an inspiration to scholars and students across many disciplines. These expressive pages demonstrate why.