{"id":5701,"date":"2024-01-11T11:48:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-11T11:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/?p=5701"},"modified":"2024-08-02T13:37:44","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T13:37:44","slug":"eric-vuillard-the-war-of-the-poor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/2024\/01\/11\/eric-vuillard-the-war-of-the-poor\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00c9ric Vuillard: The War of the Poor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The war in \u00c9ric Vuillard\u2019s <em>The War of the Poor<\/em> (2019, tr: Mark Polizzotti , 2021) is not a single point in time but an ongoing campaign fought throughout history. Although it focuses on Thomas M\u00fcntzer, a 16th century German preacher and reformer, its narrative drops in on a handful of social campaigners from times past to connect a wider struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">M\u00fcntzer disagreed with the doctrines of the day and led a doomed peasants\u2019 revolt in 1525 which eventually resulted, as these things often do, in his execution. And it\u2019s ultimately martyrdom that this book seems to be about, suggesting that dying for a cause is less desirable than achieving the aims of the cause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019m ambivalent in whether I liked this book, it\u2019s a short potted history of a relatively obscure historical pocket, more bland essay than soaring fiction, That\u2019s not to say it\u2019s doesn\u2019t have its moments: at times the narration turns sarcastic, achieving a few smiles in an otherwise dry prose. And &#8211; small mercies! &#8211; it doesn\u2019t bog itself down in the minutiae of theological debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What Vuillard\u2019s chosen window has to say about today seems obvious, if not clearly stated. He only makes one contemporary reference, I think, to say \u201cmerch is God\u201d. In a time of rising inequality (\u201cThe powerful never give up anything, not bread and not freedom.\u201d) its parallels seem clear. The prevailing system should be fought against and this time won.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Early in the book the creation of the Gutenberg Bible serves as a model for widening its teachings (\u201cthey had made one hundred and eighty copies, where in that time a single monk would have made only one.\u201d). In this age of the Internet, the war of the poor has global reach. But can it be successful against global power?T<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The war in \u00c9ric Vuillard\u2019s The War of the Poor (2019, tr: Mark Polizzotti , 2021) is not a single point in time but an ongoing campaign fought throughout history. Although it focuses on Thomas M\u00fcntzer, a 16th century German preacher and reformer, its narrative drops in on a handful of social campaigners from times <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/2024\/01\/11\/eric-vuillard-the-war-of-the-poor\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[309],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vuillard-eric"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/9781529038552-2.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pon-1tX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5701"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5767,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5701\/revisions\/5767"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}