Hero of a famous episode in 16th-c. Gascony. A rich peasant returns to his family after a long absence, lives happily with his wife for four years, but is revealed as an impostor by the true Martin Guerre. The resulting law case, written up by the judge Jean de Coras, was sensationally popular; it has been the subject of novels, a play, and a film, and has been fascinatingly analysed by Natalie Zemon Davies (The Return of Martin Guerre, 1983).

[Peter France]

The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.