Robert Darnton Books
Robert Darnton is an American cultural historian and academic, best known for his pioneering work on the history of books and the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century France. He has served as a professor at Princeton University and Harvard University, and as director of the Harvard University Library.
Known for: The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History
Books by Robert Darnton
The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History
In this classic work of cultural history, Robert Darnton explores the mental world of eighteenth-century France through a series of vivid case studies. From the bizarre tale of Parisian printers who slaughtered cats to the storytelling traditions of peasants and the intellectual life of the Enlightenment, Darnton reconstructs how ordinary people understood their world before the French Revolution. The book combines anthropology, history, and literary analysis to reveal the symbolic meanings behind seemingly trivial events, offering a new way to interpret the past.
Read SummaryKey Insights from Robert Darnton
The Great Cat Massacre
The story begins in a Parisian print shop in the 1730s, where apprentices, living under harsh conditions, staged a strange and cruel event: they slaughtered the household’s cats. To modern eyes, it looks like mindless brutality. But when I first came across the tale—in the memoir of a printer named ...
From The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History
Interpreting the Cat Massacre
The key to interpreting this event lay not in the literal act, but in the symbols surrounding it. Anthropologically, the massacre functions much like carnival: a temporary world upside down, where servants mimic masters and order dissolves into chaos. Through inversion, laughter becomes subversion. ...
From The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History
About Robert Darnton
Robert Darnton is an American cultural historian and academic, best known for his pioneering work on the history of books and the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century France. He has served as a professor at Princeton University and Harvard University, and as director of the Harvard University Library...
Read more
Robert Darnton is an American cultural historian and academic, best known for his pioneering work on the history of books and the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century France. He has served as a professor at Princeton University and Harvard University, and as director of the Harvard University Library...
Robert Darnton is an American cultural historian and academic, best known for his pioneering work on the history of books and the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century France. He has served as a professor at Princeton University and Harvard University, and as director of the Harvard University Library. His research has profoundly influenced the study of cultural and intellectual history.
Frequently Asked Questions
Robert Darnton is an American cultural historian and academic, best known for his pioneering work on the history of books and the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century France. He has served as a professor at Princeton University and Harvard University, and as director of the Harvard University Library.
Read Robert Darnton's books in 15 minutes
Get AI-powered summaries with key insights from 1 book by Robert Darnton.