The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History

Darnton examines the history and culture of eighteenth-century France as it provides a view of the people of the cities, towns, and countryside during 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. By marrying the techniques and insights of the anthropologist to the narrative arts of the historian, Professor Darnton evokes the exotic and the commonplace in the culture of eighteenth century Frenchmen.
The six essays are:
Peasants tell Tales - The Meaning of Mother Goose;
Workers Revolt - The Great Cat Massacre of Rue Saint-Severin;
A Bourgeois Puts His World in Order - The City as a Text;
A Police Inspector Sorts his Files - The Anatomy of the Republic of Letters;
Philosophers Trim the Tree of Knowledge - The Epistemological Strategy of the Encyclopedie; and
Readers Respond to Rousseau - The Fabrication of Romantic Sensitivity...