People tend to think that cultural history just refers to traditions, art, and human achievements, but cultural history is well more defined than those three categories. The Great Cat Massacre by Robert Darnton provides an effective job defining culture history by revealing how men and women of France and peasants, such as: artisans, philosophers, and peasants think in the eighteenth century. He expose the mindset of of those people to contribute to the world, give meaning through thoughts/emotions, and relation to real-world situations. These can be identified by historical events, research through Mother Goose and social classes.
Cultural history can imply through many things, such as, folktales that supports the historians to understand …show more content…
“The adroit mixing symbols gives Little Red Riding Hood an opportunity to get into bed with her father, the wolf, thereby giving vent to her oedipal fantasies” (Darnton 13). Therefore, Bruno Bettelheim had a better understand of Little Red Riding Hood by identifying she was too young for adult sex, the wolf is the representation of the father/hunter, and has the opportunity to get into bed with her father to perform adult sexual intercourse. Darnton effectively gave a representation on not only the hardships of the peasants actions, but also the peasants cultural background through folktales “but they could not escape from a seigneurial system that denied them sufficient land to achieve economic independence and that siphoned off whatever surplus they produced” or “they ate meat only a few times a year, on feast days or after autumn slaughtering if they did not have enough silage to feed the livestock over the winter” (Darnton 23-24). Looking through the cultural lenses of peasants represents the suffering through …show more content…
This event happened in the late 1730s, in the printing shop of Jacques Vincent. A worker, Nicolas Contat, witness the cruel massacre of two workers, Jerome and Léveille whom conducted this crime. Before they executed this event, Nicolas and the two other workers “slept in filthy, freezing room, rose before dawn, ran errands all day white dodging insults from the journeymen and abuse from the master, and receiving nothing but slops to eat” resulting them to work hard as they can but be mistreated by the master with no sympathy (Darnton 75). Eventually, Jerome and Léveille were at a breaking point with how the bourgeois treated them and they knew about cats were important to them, mostly the wife’s, since she is the one who adored the most is la grise. The way for both to retaliate was receiving help from the journeymen, they both were armed with brooms (the handle), metal bars, and other tools for trades, then went after every single cat they came across but killed la grise first, “Léveille smashed its spine with an iron bar and Jerome finished it off” (Darnton 76). Eventually, this massacre became known in the printer shop, the workers viewed this entertainly funny. Léveillé would reenact this event twenty times to gain laughter from workers, in which, “The idea was to humiliate someone in the shop by satirizing his peculiarities”
Cultural history can imply through many things, such as, folktales that supports the historians to understand …show more content…
“The adroit mixing symbols gives Little Red Riding Hood an opportunity to get into bed with her father, the wolf, thereby giving vent to her oedipal fantasies” (Darnton 13). Therefore, Bruno Bettelheim had a better understand of Little Red Riding Hood by identifying she was too young for adult sex, the wolf is the representation of the father/hunter, and has the opportunity to get into bed with her father to perform adult sexual intercourse. Darnton effectively gave a representation on not only the hardships of the peasants actions, but also the peasants cultural background through folktales “but they could not escape from a seigneurial system that denied them sufficient land to achieve economic independence and that siphoned off whatever surplus they produced” or “they ate meat only a few times a year, on feast days or after autumn slaughtering if they did not have enough silage to feed the livestock over the winter” (Darnton 23-24). Looking through the cultural lenses of peasants represents the suffering through …show more content…
This event happened in the late 1730s, in the printing shop of Jacques Vincent. A worker, Nicolas Contat, witness the cruel massacre of two workers, Jerome and Léveille whom conducted this crime. Before they executed this event, Nicolas and the two other workers “slept in filthy, freezing room, rose before dawn, ran errands all day white dodging insults from the journeymen and abuse from the master, and receiving nothing but slops to eat” resulting them to work hard as they can but be mistreated by the master with no sympathy (Darnton 75). Eventually, Jerome and Léveille were at a breaking point with how the bourgeois treated them and they knew about cats were important to them, mostly the wife’s, since she is the one who adored the most is la grise. The way for both to retaliate was receiving help from the journeymen, they both were armed with brooms (the handle), metal bars, and other tools for trades, then went after every single cat they came across but killed la grise first, “Léveille smashed its spine with an iron bar and Jerome finished it off” (Darnton 76). Eventually, this massacre became known in the printer shop, the workers viewed this entertainly funny. Léveillé would reenact this event twenty times to gain laughter from workers, in which, “The idea was to humiliate someone in the shop by satirizing his peculiarities”