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Darnton's approach to the historical texts he uses, both in the Cat
Massacre chapter and others in the volume, has been criticised since shortly after the work's appearance for its simplistic assumptions. An early exchange between Darnton and French cultural historian Roger Chartier was subjected to
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The cats were a favourite of the printer's wife and were fed much better than the apprentices, who were in turn served "catfood" (rotting meat scraps). Aside from this, they were mistreated, beaten and exposed to cold and horrible weather. One of the apprentices imitated a cat by screaming like one
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insult, delivered by actions, not words, and it struck home because cats occupied a soft spot in the bourgeois way of life. Keeping pets was as alien to the workers as torturing animals was to the bourgeois. Trapped between incompatible sensitivities, the cats had the worst of both
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a scathing analysis by
Dominic LaCapra of the 'Great Symbol Massacre' involved. Harold Mah in 1991 focused directly on Darnton's account of the 'Massacre', arguing ultimately that the author had 'suppressed' the actual nature of the source in pursuit of an engaging interpretation.
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for several nights, making the printer and his wife despair. Finally, the printer ordered the cats rounded up and dispatched. The apprentices did this, rounded up all the cats they could find, beat them half to death and held a 'trial'. They found the cats
220:, aimed to gain greater insight into the period and social groups involved by studying what he perceived to be something which appeared alien to the late modern mind – the fact that killing cats might be funny.
276:
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LaCapra, D. (1988). Chartier, Darnton, and the Great Symbol
Massacre. The Journal of Modern History, 60(1), 95-112. Retrieved May 17, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/1880407
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The joke worked so well because the workers played so skillfully with a repertory of ceremonies and symbols. Cats suited their purposes perfectly. By smashing the spine of
237:, and devised a plan to deal with the pompous pets by slaughtering them with the intention of discomforting their masters. Darnton interprets this as an early form of
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167:, first published in 1984. The book's title is derived from its most famous chapter which describes and interprets an unusual source detailing the "massacre" of
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Harold Mah, “Suppressing the Text:The
Metaphysics of Ethnographic History in Darnton's Great Cat Massacre," History Workshop 31 (spring 1991), 1–20
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Stewart, Philip (Winter 1985–1986). "The Great Cat
Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History. by Robert Darnton".
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Darnton describes how, as the apprentices suffered grueling working conditions, they came to resent the privileges which their
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they called the master's wife a witch and a slut, while at the same time making the master into a cuckold and a fool. It was
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Mah, Harold (Spring 1991). "Suppressing the Text: The
Metaphysics of Ethnographic History in Darnton's Great Cat Massacre".
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Palmer, William (November 1986). "The Great Cat
Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History by Robert Darnton".
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