The Great Cat Massacre

The prestigious cultural historian Robert Darnton dissects the ways of thinking and feeling of the French in the 18th century.

"The funniest thing that ever happened in Jacques Vincent's printing shop, according to a worker who witnessed it, was a seditious massacre of cats." Thus begins Robert Darnton's study of the violent rituals practiced by French artisans in the mid-18th century. In a series of exquisitely written essays, Darnton reveals the strange and wonderful worldviews of the people who populated the cities, villages, and countryside of France during the Enlightenment.

The historian, in The Massacre of the Cats , invites the reader to consider the reasons that led a group of Parisian artisans to find a massacre of cats so funny, and how humor was used by the working class of the Ancien Régime.