HISTORY 202 Chapter Notes - Chapter 0: Gallows, Early Modern Europe, Proverb
Document Summary
The great cat massacre and other french episodes in french cultural history. The book investigates ways of thinking in eighteenth-century france: it attempts to show not merely what people thought but how they thought how they construed the world, invested it with meaning, and infused it with emotion. When we cannot get a proverb, or a joke, or a ritual, we know we are on to something. They continuously howled all night on the roof over their heads, which did not allow them a full night"s rest. L veill smashed the cat"s spine in with an iron bar and jerome finished it off. They pronounced the animals guilty and administered them their last rights. Afterwards, they strung them up on the gallows. The mistress walked up and shrieked when she witnessed a bloody cat dangling from a noose. Our own ability to get the joke is an indication of the distance that separates us from the workers of preindustrial europe.
