The Great Cat Massacre

12 Pages 3081 Words

trast of potentially different views of what Robert Darnton is telling us in his book.
Robert Darnton starts The Great Cat Massacre with a rather repulsive version of Little Red Riding Hood. Red Riding Hood unknowingly eats her grandmother and drinks her blood, to be stripped naked and then eaten by the wolf. Now this is one of the earliest versions of this story ever found in fact Little Red doesn’t even have a name she’s just the “little girl”. (Darnton Pg. 9) Darnton later explains that this version was the first recorded from oral tradition passed from generation to generation. Darnton uses the text to shatter the previous conceptions of this story. Next Darnton goes to explain the standard mode of processing the text, which would be to hire some psychoanalysts to break down the hidden meaning and intentions of the story’s creator and or creators. In the case of Little Red Riding Hood they did just that two of the best known psychoanalysts, Erich Fromm and Bruno Bettelheim. The two psychoanalysts decipher the children’s tale stating that the story concerns an adolescent’s confrontation with adult sexuality and that the red hood as a symbol of menstruation and the bottle of milk a sign of virginity. Darnton goes on to later explain that this is not an accurate depiction of peasants concerns, but more so of the middle to upper class. Fromm and Bettelheim, according to Darnton never mentions their source, but Darnton would later state that it was derived from the Brothers Grimm tales.
In the following chapter we find out where the book’s title comes from an actual historical event called “The Great Cat Massacre”. In the chapter Darnton examines the gruesome yet comical account of some apprentices and journeymen working in the printing shop of Jacques Vincent. (Darnton Pg. 75) Told from the accounts of Nicolas Contat and other collaborating sources to explain the thought process behind their actions of that d...