The Great Cat Massacre - Softcover

Darnton, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0465015565 ISBN 13: 9780465015566

Publisher: Basic Books, 2000

Synopsis

In this dazzling series of essays, Robert Darnton exhumes the strange and wonderful world views of the ordinary and extraordinary people inhabiting the cities, towns, and countryside of France in what we like to call “The Age of Enlightenment.”

About this title

From the Back Cover

"The funniest thing that ever happened in the printing shop of Jacques Vincent, according to a worker who witnessed it, was a riotous massacre of cats." So begins Robert Darnton's exploration of the violent rituals practiced by artisans in mid-eighteenth century France. In a series of elegantly rendered essays, Professor Darnton exhumes the strange and wonderful world views of the ordinary and extraordinary people inhabiting the cities, towns and countryside of France in the Age of Enlightenment. Ranging from the grim folklore of the French peasantry to the romantic sensibilities binding Rousseau to his provincial bourgeois readers, Darnton conveys ways of thinking and feeling long misunderstood. In evoking the exotic and the commonplace in the culture of eighteenth century Frenchmen, Darnton invites the reader to ponder such questions as why a group of Parisian craftsmen found the massacre of cats so funny and how jokes worked among the workers of the old regime. The Great Cat Massacre is a kaleidoscopic view of a culture both familiar and strange. In this book Robert Darnton administers a necessary and unforgettable dose of culture shock.

Reviews

"Brilliant."

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0465015565
• ISBN 13: 9780465015566
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320