DARNTON, BENEDICT AND LEVI IN DISPUTE AND THE GREAT DISCUSSION ABOUT THE GREAT CAT MASSACRE

Abstract

this essay problematizes the repercussions that the book by the American historian Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History, unleashed from 1984, the year of its publication, among the non-specialized public and in publications area specific. We will analyze texts signed by two historians: one American, Philip Benedict, and the other, Italian, Giovanni Levi, who positioned themselves in an important international journal, a magazine in the area of History, the Italian Quaderni Storici. Our objective is to map how this work was considered in the criticism of the two aforementioned authors and, for that, in addition to a careful reading of the book itself and the texts in which it is evaluated, we collate information from a biographical and intellectual nature of Darnton, especially from of interviews granted by him and of works with which he dialogues.