When the apprentices of a Paris printing shop in the 1730's held a series of mock trials and then hanged all the cats they could lay their hands on, why did they find it so hilariously funny that they choked with laughter when they reenacted it in pantomime some twenty times? Why in the 18th century version of "Little Red Riding Hood" did the wolf eat the child at the end? What did the anonymous townsman of Montpelier have in mind when he kept an exhaustive dossier on all the activities of his native city? These are some of the provocative questions Robert Darnton attempts to answer in this dazzling series of essays that probe the ways of thought in what we like to call "The Age of Enlightenment."

1730年代的巴黎，一群印刷业学徒发起了一场翻天覆地的屠猫仪式，他们折磨然后杀死所有他们能够找到的猫，包括他们师母的宠物猫。这种残酷的仪式何以在他们眼中如此“好笑”？十八世纪法国人的文化有珍奇的一面，也有寻常的一面，作者一一召唤而出，藉以邀请读者思索这一类的问题：为什么巴黎的一群工匠觉得猫大屠杀那幺有趣？玩笑如何在旧制度的工人间发酵？《猫大屠杀》揭露一个文化的万花筒视野，既熟悉又奇妙。作者在书中提供了治疗文化震荡所不可或缺而且入口难忘的一帖药剂。尽管这是一本学术著述，在作者以带有强烈文学趣味的随笔体例写作的策略下，读者绝对可以获得一次既有益又有趣的阅读经历。

1730年代的巴黎，一群印刷业学徒发起了一场翻天覆地的屠猫仪式，他们折磨然后杀死所有他们能够找到的猫，包括他们师母的宠物猫。18世纪法国人的文化有珍奇的一面，也有寻常的一面，作者藉以邀请读者思索这一类的问题：为什么巴黎的一群工匠觉得对猫的大屠杀那么有趣？玩笑如何在旧制度的工人间发酵？同时，作者还选取了其他五个法国历史场景，分别基于几个单独的史料，从而揭露一个文化的万花筒视野，既熟悉又奇妙。 本书希望能够在历史学中引入人类学视角，但又警惕地不愿让人类学取而代之。在人类学的意义逐渐彰显的今天再来回望，达恩顿对方法论的尝试足以使他成为新文化史的开拓者之一。

《旧制度时期的地下文学》是著名的欧洲文化史学者罗伯特·达恩顿的代表作之一，描述了由盗版书商、雇佣文人、串街小贩、走私者以及警方密探所构成的隐秘世界，一个启蒙运动的“地下社会”。通过大量未曾披露的第一手档案资料，本书首次揭示了已经消逝于历史的18世纪“地下反文化”的迷人故事。

本书研究了法国旧制度对文化、写作、图书出版的控制以及禁书如何在控制下的出售。作者探索了这些所谓不好的书文化与政治意义，同时介绍了三种影响极深的销售最好的禁书及其读者。本书中，作者把目光转向了出版和阅读的历史，通过对审查体制的考察来研究旧制度，并表明18世纪后半叶法国的色情、哲学和政治之间的关联。

这是关于一部书的书：这位主角似乎有些神秘，而且它可以缩到无穷小，就像从一面镜子反射到另一面镜子。不过，如果处理得当，也会增强人们对早期现代历史诸多方面的理解，如人们所知的，在法国，书籍史就和历史研究中很广泛的问题有关。启蒙运动这样伟大的思想运动是如何在社会中传播的？影响的深度和广度如何？贤哲的思想在物质化到书中时，采取何种形式？印刷品的物质基础和生产技术与它的主旨和传播有很大的关系吗？图书市场如何确定其功能？出版商、书商、推销员和文化传播中的其他媒介扮演什么角色？出版如何像生意那样运作？它如何适... 罗伯特·达恩顿所讲的故事非常引人入胜，他精心梳理了复杂无序而又晦涩难懂的史料，叙述优雅、精确、充满智慧，对细节拥有小说家一般的眼光，对历史涵义的分析清晰而富有洞察力。 ———————————————— 另据文汇读书周报： 一部读来令人不忍释卷的学术著作。本书以瑞士纳沙泰尔印刷公司的数万份档案材料为基础，详细论述了18世纪后半期历版《百科全书》的出版发行过程与当时社会状况的密切关联，展现了出版发行过程中非常“琐碎”的细节，使读者能够充分感受当时的历史氛围，并且阐明了法国大革命对出版和新闻业的具体而重大的影响。

Listen to "An Electronic Cabaret: Paris Street Songs, 1748-50" for songs from Poetry and the Police Audio recording copyright [copyright] 2010 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. In spring 1749, Francois Bonis, a medical student in Paris, found himself unexpectedly hauled off to the Bastille for distributing an 'abominable poem about the king.' So began the Affair of the Fourteen, a police crackdown on ordinary citizens for unauthorized poetry recitals. Why was the official response to these poems so intense? In this captivating book, Robert Darnton follows the poems as they passed through several media: copied on scraps of paper, dictated from one person to another, memorized and declaimed to an audience. But the most effective dispersal occurred through music, when poems were sung to familiar tunes. Lyrics often referred to current events or revealed popular attitudes toward the royal court. The songs provided a running commentary on public affairs, and Darnton brilliantly traces how the lyrics fit into song cycles that carried messages through the streets of Paris during a period of rising discontent. He uncovers a complex communication network, illuminating the way information circulated in a semi-literate society. This lucid and entertaining book reminds us of both the importance of oral exchanges in the history of communication and the power of 'viral' networks long before our internet age.

His latest book vibrates with the strange political and literary energies of ancien regime France. The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France traces the merging of philosophical, sexual, and anti-monarchical interests into the pulp fiction of the 1780s, banned books that make fascinating reading more than two centuries later. French literature of the eighteenth century means to us today Rousseau and Voltaire and the "classic" texts that, we imagine, gave rise to the Revolution. Yet very few of the standard works of the Enlightenment were as widely read as books whose names we have never heard, books that were the currency of a huge literary underground during the reign of Louis XVI. Included in this volume are Darnton's translations of excerpts from three of these works. After twenty-five years of research, Darnton has summarized his findings in one brilliant work that examines the reciprocal relationship between private literature and the public world, the (illegal) spread of Enlightenment thought, and the interesting possibility that the writings of some not-so-famous authors contributed to the fall of the French aristocracy.

Review Virginia Quarterly Review : A fascinating study of the effects that the theories of the notorious Viennese physician, Franz Mesmer, had upon social and political thinkers during the two decades preceding the French Revolution. This book is a skillful exploration of the various psychological factors that made mesmerism a widely accepted attitude[The book] will interest literary scholars as well as historians since mesmerism is examined as a phenomenon that bequeathed an attitude that found its expression in the writings of the preromantics and the romantics. Isis : This is an excellent book and one of singular interest both to the historian of science and to the French historian. Science : [An] excellent and exemplary study in the history of ideas. Based on a thorough study of manuscripts, pamphlets, and journals, learned in its broad setting and persuasive in its internal logic, supported by richly relevant quotations and reproductions of contemporary engravings, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France provides a commendable model for those interested in the way 'true' and 'false' ideas interact and broadly influence behavior.