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·泽蒙·戴维斯（Natalie Zemon Davis, 1928- )，著名历史学家，美国新文化史的代表人物，1978年起先后在布朗大学、多伦多大学、伯克利加州大学、普林斯顿大学等高校执教。曾任美国历史学会主席。现为加拿大多伦多大学历史学教授。戴维斯的专长为欧洲近代早期历史研究。曾因其杰出的史学成就，荣获霍尔堡国际纪念奖（2010）、最高等级的加拿大勋章（2012）以及美国国家人文奖章（2012）。被誉为“当今在历史写作方面最具有创造力的人之一”。