SOURCE: Trexler, Richard C. Review of Fiction in the Archives, by Natalie Z. Davis. Renaissance Quarterly 42, no. 1 (spring 1989): 124-25.

In the following review of Fiction in the Archives, Trexler praises the quality of Davis's writing, but suggests that she could have produced a stronger argument if the book were longer.

A profound insight lies behind this analysis [Fiction in the Archives] of a sample of men's (164 cases) and all women's appeals (42) to the French king for pardon between 1523 and 1568: similar to the fictional vrai histoire, the story one told a judge has to be shaped from a storehouse of existing stories if it was to be real enough to move the crown and thus be successful. Thus apart from the question of the veracity of any particular tale told the king by an appellant—plus his or her lawyer, the royal scribe, and the chancellor—the historian turned...