The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural HistoryWhen the apprentices of a Paris printing shop in the 1730's held a series of mock trials and then hanged all the cats they could lay their hands on, why did they find it so hilariously funny that they choked with laughter when they reenacted it in pantomime some twenty times? Why in the 18th century version of "Little Red Riding Hood" did the wolf eat the child at the end? What did the anonymous townsman of Montpelier have in mind when he kept an exhaustive dossier on all the activities of his native city? These are some of the provocative questions Robert Darnton attempts to answer in this dazzling series of essays that probe the ways of thought in what we like to call "The Age of Enlightenment." |
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The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History Robert Darnton Limited preview - 2009 |
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abbé artisans arts Bacon bourgeois cat massacre century complète Contat Conte populaire français culture d'Hémery d'Hémery's Delarue and Tenèze devil Dictionnaire Diderot and d'Alembert Discours préliminaire dossier early modern early modern France eighteenth eighteenth-century Encyclopédie Ernest Labrousse father folklore folktales France French gens girl Grimm Histoire Ibid Italian Folktales Jacques Jacques Le Goff Jean Jean-Jacques journeymen king knowledge Léveillé literary literature Little Red Riding lives livres Louis magic master mistress Mme de Pompadour Monsieur Montpellier Mother Goose Neuchâtel nobility Nouvelle Héloïse novel Old Regime oral tradition Ostervald Paris peasant Perrault philosophes Pierre police popular printed Ranson to STN reader Red Riding Hood reports republic of letters Rousseau rue Saint-Séverin Saint Second Estate seems servant siècle social Société society story symbols tale type theme Third Estate tion took Viard village vols wanted wife workers writers wrote