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The Great Cat Massacre

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The Great Cat Massacre

What is "cultural history"? How and why did it develop?

The Great Cat Massacre of French Cultural History, compiled by American historian

Robert Darnton, is a seminal work just on the cultural history of early France. In the cultural

history of 1730, two apprentice printers staged a trial for their employers' cats, found them

guilty, and executed the death sentence by hanging. American scholars and performers alike

have never stopped being interested in this awful episode in France's past (Darnton, 2009).

Danton's The Great Cat Massacre depicts the outlandish ideas and cultural occurrences that

materialize in the ordinary lives of individuals in France at the beginning of the modern age via

the lens of historical study circling a primary story. He uses literary stereotypes of rural and

urban French to attempt to distinguish between them. The novel explains modern French

ontology by drawing from authentic materials, including police records, folklore, and diverse

works from the bourgeois elite. In the article of the same name, Nicholas Contat, who started as a

printmaker's assistant before becoming a journeyman, describes his unique analysis brand.

What are some examples of cultural history?

Danton's work, especially the cultural examples he provides, is crucial for developing

philosophy in several important ways. In attempting to comprehend numerous events and the

mindset established in others, it gives essential information as a historical example. History

books that cover topics like the evolution of art, music, and ideas are additional examples of

what may be included in a comprehensive definition of cultural history. The human civilization

of the Italian Renaissance (by Jacob Burckhardt, 1860) is one such work that is generally cited as

a cornerstone of contemporary art history.

Why did the "Great Cat Massacre" happen?

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As Darnton explains, the Great Cat Massacre occurred because the apprentices, who were

subjected to inhumane working conditions, resented the special treatment shown to their masters'

cats and plotted to cause their owners to distress by slaying the haughty feline companions.

Darnton said this was an early kind of labor unrest (Darnton, 2009). Similarly, the wife in the

tale may have been right when she said she thought "they were endangered by a more severe sort

of insubordination" than just a work stoppage. An Inspector of Police Cleans Up His Files.

Literary Socialism: A Dissection" Darnton, after examining the mindsets of the farmer, the

craftsman, and the urban bourgeois, move on to the less readily pigeonholed component of 18th-

century French society: the intellectual.

What did cats represent?

Darnton's symbolic significance goes well beyond the lowly cat, so he exterminated them

in one excellent cat slaughter. As the target of the book's namesake atrocity, the cat demands

Darnton's attention as he tries to understand the motivations behind the killing and what made it

hilarious to Contat with his friends (Darnton, 2009). At its most fundamental level, cats

metaphorize the power dynamic between the massacre's master and student. All night long, the

cats howled, giving voice to the despair that Contat felt every night as he tried to sleep in such

deplorable surroundings. Darnton concludes that the slaughter was partly planned to charge the

mistress of practicing witchcraft because of the symbolic significance of cats, a relationship

made plain in Contat's account. In addition, the memoir's heated language makes obvious the

sexual implications of cats; Contat mentions the mistress's "pussy" on at least four separate

occasions. Dead cats were hung up about the master's house as an implied allegation of

cuckoldry, which makes sense given the cat's central position in different charivari rites.
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Reference

Darnton, R. (2009). The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History.

Hachette UK