Robert Darnton’s The Great Cat Massacre, published in 1984, was an early attempt to write a history of mentalities, or the study of how ordinary people thought. This form of study was created in the 1960’s with the aid of anthropology, leading to it also being called anthropological history. It was believed that anthropology offered historians the ability to enter into another culture or time by trying to see things from the “native’s point of view.” The goal of Darnton’s book is to try and look at the pre-revolutionary period in France and to see if the mentalities of the people at this time could be determined and whether or not these sources provided evidence for the upcoming revolution. To achieve this Darnton "reads" the events and rituals as well as the written sources to look at various aspects of life and class in pre-revolutionary France. Each new chapter focused on a higher social class with fewer people being represented. Similar to the case of Natalie Zemon Davis’s The Return of Martin Guerre, Darnton believed it was possible to use folktales, events, and other written artifacts to “read” and understand the psychology of the people of France during the pre-revolutionary…show more content… Unlike the tales told in other parts of Europe, French tales commonly showed the protagonist using his cleverness and wit to overcome the antagonist. This demonstrated, according to Darnton, the peasants’ belief in their ability to survive the power of the wealthy though their characterization of the protagonists as weak but cunning and the antagonists as powerful but stupid. The peasants realized the world and the social order was against them and Darnton believed these tales were a coping mechanism more than a call for revolution that some may think them to
