The Great Cat Massacre by Robert Darnton
In Paris in the late 1730s an extraordinary event occurred. Two printing-shop apprentices rounded up the neighbourhood cats, including their mistress's favourite pet, and battered them to death. They then staged a mock trial and strung them from gallows, to riotous applause and much hilarity - something we find incomprehensible today. Was this a bizarre carnivalesque ritual? An act to ward off witchcraft? Or a workers' revolt against their tyrannical master? To try to enter the minds of ordinary people in 18th-century France and discover "the mental world of the unenlightened during the Enlightenment", Robert Darnton's engrossing, unusual history analyzes a rich variety of material, including the grim, earthy peasant sources of folk tales such as "Little Red Riding Hood"; a curious description of a city; and a policeman's secret dossier. His innovative ethnographic study shows us not just what people thought in the past, but how differently they viewed the world from us.
"* 'A brilliant work of popular history' - NEWSWEEK * 'Authoritative.. elegant and searching' - DAILY TELEGRAPH * 'A rich and splendid book' - Marghanita Laski"
Robert Darnton was born in New York in 1939 and was educated at Harvard (B.Phil., 1962) and Oxford (D.Phil., 1964). After working as a reporter on The New York Times, he returned to Harvard as a junior research fellow before moving to Princeton where he is Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History. Professor Darnton is the author of many books on French history.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780141390802 |
| ISBN 10 | 0141390808 |
| Title | The Great Cat Massacre |
| Author | Robert Darnton |
| Series | Penguin Classic History S |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Year published | 2001-06-28 |
| Number of pages | 320 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |