Paris, 1730s. Apprentices. Starving. Their master's cats eating better than them. What happens next is exactly as unhinged as it sounds.

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Sources

Robert Darnton, "The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History" (Basic Books, 1984) - https://amzn.to/4dnaC7T

Nicolas Contat, "Anecdotes typographiques" (Oxford Bibliographical Society edition, 1980)

Roger Chartier, "Texts, Symbols, and Frenchness," Journal of Modern History, Vol. 57, No. 4 (1985)

Dominick LaCapra, "Chartier, Darnton, and the Great Symbol Massacre," Journal of Modern History, Vol. 60, No. 1 (1988)

Harold Mah, "The Epistemology of the Sandwich," in Intellectual History and the Return of Literature (1991)