by Howard Prosser

“Carnivals in History” (1981) is the only article Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie published in Thesis Eleven. The piece’s appearance, then and now, arguably says more about the journal than it does the esteemed historian. Having him appear in its early pages was a coup for the new publication. Other big names followed. And, mercifully, some lesser ones. To include his piece in the Top 40 offers a marker of the journal’s prestige as well as the persistence of critical thought among its many pages.