To receive a royal pardon in sixteenth-century France for certain kinds of homicide—unpremeditated, unintended, in self-defense, or otherwise excusable—a supplicant had to tell the king a story. These stories took the form of letters of remission, documents narrated to royal notaries by admitted offenders who, in effect, stated their case for pardon to the king. Thousands of such stories are found in French archives, providing precious evidence of the narrative skills and interpretive schemes of peasants and artisans as well as the well-born.

This book, by one of the most acclaimed historians of our time, is a pioneering effort to us the tools of literary analysis to interpret archival texts: to show how people from different stations in life shaped the events of a crime into a story, and to compare their stories with those told by Renaissance authors not intended to judge the truth or falsity of the pardon narratives, but rather to refer to the techniques for crafting stories.

A number of fascinating crime stories, often possessing Rabelaisian humor, are told in the course of the book, which consists of three long chapters. These chapters explore the French law of homicide, depictions of "hot anger" and self-defense, and the distinctive characteristics of women's stories of bloodshed.

The book is illustrated with seven contemporary woodcuts and a facsimile of a letter of remission, with appendixes providing several other original documents. This volume is based on the Harry Camp Memorial Lectures given at Stanford University in 1986.

娜塔莉·澤濛·戴維斯（Natalie Zemon Davis, 1928- )，著名曆史學傢，美國新文化史的代錶人物，1978年起先後在布朗大學、多倫多大學、伯剋利加州大學、普林斯頓大學等高校執教。曾任美國曆史學會主席。現為加拿大多倫多大學曆史學教授。戴維斯的專長為歐洲近代早期曆史研究。曾因其傑齣的史學成就，榮獲霍爾堡國際紀念奬（2010）、最高等級的加拿大勛章（2012）以及美國國傢人文奬章（2012）。被譽為“當今在曆史寫作方麵最具有創造力的人之一”。