Summary Of The Great Cat Massacre

The Great Cat Massacre is a historical book written by Robert Darnton in 1939. Robert Darnton is an American cultural historian, academic librarian and a historian with a special interest in the eighteenth-century French History. The book is a highly authentic perspective on French social motives and practices that took place between 1697 and 1784. The book has six chapters which Darnton referred to as episodes, each dealing with a specific case study that draws to its anthropological conclusion. This paper is a critical review of this book “The Great Cat Massacre” by Robert Darnton, specifically focusing on the author’s main arguments, primary sources and persuasiveness of his arguments.

From reading all the six chapters of the book, the thesis

The incipient chapter titled mainly draws relationship from Charles Perrault’s eighteenth century literature material. This chapter looks at how on how different European societies such as the British, French and German uses folktales different to create their specific identities. From the chapter we can identify unique aspects of folktales of the different societies, for example, the German tales are mainly characterized by bloody violence. According to Denton, the French folktales were characterized by trickery which he explains reflected the poor French people’s attempts to the 18th-century Malthusian misery. The second chapter which gives the book its title is known as “Cat Massacre.” The chapter focuses on the 18th century mass killing of cats in a printing shop in France by the apprentice. Darnton argues that this killing was a metaphor for workers revolt against capitalism that ruined their life. The capitalism in the 18th century France was tough for the normal worker in that it put a glass ceiling on upward mobility and general poor employment terms compared to the rich. This chapter reflects the popular 18th-century European tradition of torturing animal especially the cats for sport. The third chapter titled is an incredibly detailed description of the city of Montpellier by a resident of the city. The Manuscript from which Darnton wrote the essay from narrates various aspects of changing city and efforts by the residents to adapt to the changes. This chapter advances Darnton’s objective of helping the reader picture the changes in social, culture and religious organization of the society at the onset of Enlightenment era in Europe. In the fourth chapter, Darnton focuses on dossiers and letters a police inspector wrote addressing himself about famous 18th-century writers. The inspector