The Cheese and the Worms is a study of the popular culture in the sixteenth century as seen through the eyes of one man, a miller brought to trial during the Inquisition. Carlo Ginzburg uses the trial records of Domenico Scandella, a miller also known as Menocchio, to show how one person responded to the confusing political and religious conditions of his time. For a common miller, Menocchio was surprisingly literate. In his trial testimony he made references to more than a dozen books, including the Bible, Boccaccio's Decameron, Mandeville's Travels, and a "mysterious" book that may have been the Koran. And what he read he recast in terms familiar to him, as in his own version of the creation: "All was chaos, that is earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and of that bulk a mass formed-just as cheese is made out of milk-and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels."
- ISBN10 0801843871
- ISBN13 9780801843877
- Publish Date 1 March 1992 (first published 1 June 1980)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 19 June 2014
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 208
- Language English