Robert Darnton

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Ways of Using Archival Materials in Writing about the Mental World
in Darnton’s and Le Roy Ladurie’s Books

By
Isabella Tianzi Cai

CAS AN596 Anthropology and History
Professor Thomas J. Barfield
May 4, 2008

Ways of Using Archival Materials in Writing about the Mental World
in Darnton’s and Le Roy Ladurie’s Books

History has left us with a rich repertoire of visible and invisible treasures of the past: folk tales, sayings, books, reports, letters, and so on and so forth. As anthropologists who want to make sense of the world in terms of how people from all ages live and think, they embark on an intellectual journey in search of the lost world. Why making such a great effort in finding out the lost mental universe if there are already philosophers, psychologists, and theologians trying to work out how people think what they think and why they think what they think? The answer seems challenging, but it ought to bring us back to the true definition of Culture with a capital “C.” Often times, the best anthropologists take a great interest in small almost inconspicuous matters even if these matters dwell in libraries and remain untouched for decades and centuries. Their eagerness is able to sustain because the mental universe must mean more than some illusory, unstable, and inconsequential conceptions. It is always easier to derive what people think from what they do than the other way around. However, the arrow must not only go from one way to the other in any history. Assuming that there are constant interactions between reality and mentality, what some anthropologists have done is that they try to explain how the complementary side of the structure works.

It is a great privilege for some anthropologists who are interested in the past to have archival materials to work with. Although the materials themselves provide irresolvable limitations such as the lack of more comprehensive backgrounds of certain documents or the lack of access to relevant agencies who produce the materials, the preserved materials are nonetheless valid entry points for them and us to peep into the old world. Sometimes different anthropologists adopt different methodologies in looking at the archival materials. Other times they have to recognize the restricted ways of dissecting certain materials because those are hardwired in the materials. Maybe by comparing one anthropologist’s method with another’s in dealing with similar themes, we can gain some useful ideas of how to use archival materials. In other words, applying one model in a different circumstance ought to inform us of the validity of this model.

In his book The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History, Robert Darnton selects specific fairy tales, ordinary people’s books, police records, philosophy books, and readers’ letters from eighteenth-century France and discusses their meanings with regard to people’s mental universe at that time. These materials are not all tightly connected. For a serious investigation of the French culture, they appear quite random too.

The first chapter taps into the famous French oral tradition. Darnton makes some general comments about peasants’ outlook on life, their values and beliefs, as well as their daily concerns. For an eighteenth-century French peasant, he or she is very comfortable with the idea of playing tricks on the authority for personal gains; however, he or she “does not go beyond the bounds of nose thumbing and table turning” and “does not dream of revolution” (Darnton 1984: 58).

The second chapter makes use of a printer, Nicolas Contat’s memoirs to recount the story of a cat massacre. Darnton does not draw any explicit connections between the fairy tales examined in the first chapter and this violent incident. He does not bring back the discussion on peasants’ mentality to aid his speculation on what drives the workers in the printing shop to revolt against their master. Instead, Darnton points out the workers’ willingness to manipulate symbols in their culture to ridicule their authority. He explains the messages carried by the expression of a cat in order to make us understand the workers’ tremendous joys of killing their mater’s wife’s cat and of playing out the scene in pantomime.

The third chapter departs from the mental universe of the lower strata of French society to that of the bourgeois. Darnton draws his analysis from a detailed writing about Montpellier by “an anonymous but solidly middle-class citizen” (Darnton 1984: 107). He emphasizes that his “task is not to discover what Montpellier really looked like in 1768 but to understand how our observer observed it” (Darnton 1984: 109). He succeeds in explicating some of the shared ideals and worries by the bourgeois, for example, the worry about “the problem of boundary crossing” (Darnton 1984: 134).

Chapter Four introduces a police inspector Joseph d’Hémery who investigates the intellectuals (Darnton 1984: 145). Darnton depicts d’Hémery’s mentaliy: this man admires the philosophy but abhors atheism for “atheism undercut the authority of the crown” (Darnton 1984: 158, 185). After introducing the division between theology and politics, Darnton moves to his next chapter about philosophers’ vigorous categorization of knowledge. The ability to group knowledge into sensible branches means power because the person who maps out knowledge knows “the arbitrariness in all ordering” (Darnton 1984:195). By “establish[ing] the frontiers of knowledge,” “man of letters” knows who is important in what and who is unimportant at all (Darnton 1984: 206).

Philosophers who take great efforts to map out knowledge need to reach out to the general public in order to bring out the real power of their map. In other words, they need to “to imprint their world view on the minds of their readers” (Darnton 1984: 215). Darnton’s last chapter tells the story of Jean Ranson who reads Jean Jacques Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Héloïse and lives his life according to the ideals put forth in Rousseau. Darnton uses the opportunity to discuss the implications of reading. He shows us how ideas shape reality in a short-term scenario.

Darnton is able to organize his analysis of these diverse kinds of materials into a book partly because of his eloquence and his good writing skills. He always transitions from one topic to another very smoothly despite the fact that the contents may not be closely linked. According a book review by Hervé Varenne, “the book is the product of a course that he taught together several times with Clifford Geertz” (Vareene 1986: 219). This is probably why we frequently encounter provocative questions in the text. Just to list a few: “But what significance did that culture attribute to cats?”; “Did our author utilize standard schemes for ordering urban topography?”; “That brings us back to our initial question: ‘How did Ranson read?” (Darnton 1984:92, 109, and 224). His methods of approaching materials, at large, are interpretive (Apter 1985: 697). He asks intelligent questions about the materials as if he knows nothing about its background. He does not try to analyze the materials in order to arrive at a conclusion that can then be easily placed in a grander scheme. He pretends to be an ignorant reader in the beginning but through a serious investigation discovers something really insightful as if by accident.

One significant proposition that Darnton makes about his method is centered on “opacity in texts” (Darnton 1984: 262). He argues that “[b]y picking at a document where it is most opaque, we may be able to unravel an alien system of meaning. The thread might even lead into a strange and wonderful world view” (Darnton 1984: 5). Although the language here may sound a little too romantic, Darnton’s book actually serves the role of testifying itself. We as readers need to read the book in order to help the author answer the question that he cannot answer himself. In the preface of another book written by Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France, Darnton shows a similar kind of belief in using non-standard materials for examining cultural history. He writes, “[I]t is worth attempting and may attain some degree of accuracy through the use of neglected clues to that mentality” (Darnton 1970: vii). If we compare Mesmerism and The Great Cat Massacre, we will realize that the former roots more in the told while the latter invests more in the telling.

Some scholars do not seem to appreciate this methodology. William Palmer writes in his review of the book that the link between opacity and culture is not well-established. Palmer doubts if the differences in opinions and attitudes between people from different social strata and different times can really shed light on an alien system of meanings. Palmer introduces some of the moral or psychological conflicts in present day America. One extreme example is the abusive behaviors of some criminals versus many who condemn such behaviors. Palmer writes,

At this point opacity loses its reliability as an indicator of the alienness of a past culture because we encounter opacity in our own culture, and there is no clear way to determine whether one event is more opaque to our culture than to its own, or if it is merely opaque to certain segments of our culture. (Palmer 1986: 920)

If Palmer is right, Darnton’s book will become a false attempt to describe eighteenth-century French cultural history, and Darnton’s claim that people from the Old Regime think and act differently from today will also remain a statement forever without proof. Palmer attacks Darnton’s use of opacity, but by doing so, he almost rejects the idea of grasping culture from various cultural elements. Maybe Palmer’s criticism can be useful in something else, which is that the mental universe of any people should not be completely ungraspable for an intelligent mind. To map out the mental universe, just like to map out knowledge, must be useful in conquering or mastering the mental universe to some extend.

Some other scholars attack Darnton for being myopic. To them, not bringing the interpretation to a grander level leaves whatever conclusions unconvincing. Varenne writes,

From a lack in the text, we are taken to a lack in imagination, and I would argue, to an impasse as Darnton, writing about two or three generations whose children performed the revolution in France, refuses to look at his data in terms of a future that is all the more possible since we know it did happen. In other words, I would read the tales told by Darnton with a sense of cultural possibility rather than a sense of cultural appropriateness. (Varenne 1986: 220)

Varenne would probably like to see Darnton being more assertive about the relation between the mentality and its effects on the reality. However, Varenne’s criticism does not really devalue Darnton’s methodology because Darnton only sets out to do what he can do, thus he only achieves that much he can do. Darnton admits that he only takes a small step in trying to search for a lost mental world. He writes humbly in this conclusion, “Perhaps other diggers will succeed where I have failed . . . The questions keep changing, and history never stops. We are not accorded ‘bottom lines’ or last words” (Darnton 1984: 261-262).

In general, being someone who is interested in symbolic anthropology as David E. Apter points out, Darnton approaches archival materials with a linguistic passion. There is no mention anywhere that Darnton is influenced by linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. However, Darnton does show a great interest in codes and a great confidence in “[s]ettings of life convey[ing] meaning through events used as metaphors and metonyms” (Apter 1985: 695-696). By embedding all his analysis at this basic level, Darnton is able to “re-create circumstances before their outcomes were indeed known” using “reconstitutive imagination” (Apter 1985: 696). Therefore, we see “history as the unfolding not of the inevitable but of situational uncertainty in which human beings make repeated efforts to transcend their circumstances” (Apter 1985: 696). That is also why we feel closer to history in Darnton’s way of writing (Apter 1985: 697).

Now imagine what Darnton will do with the archival materials that Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie has worked with in Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error. Montaillou is a small village in Southern France where the last Cathar force buttressed. Jacques Fournier, a zealous bishop who put his heart and soul in rooting out the last bit of Cathar heresy in this village, interrogates every villager that he can lay his hand on and records what he or she says word by word. The amount of information that leaves in the records covers diverse aspects of the villagers’ lives including their thoughts and feelings. While in the past, other scholars have used these materials for studies in religion or more specifically the Inquisition (Wood 1976: 1090), Le Roy Ladurie sorts them out in a way so that they paint the picture of how peasants, nobles, shepherds, and others live in the early fourteenth century.

The book is divided into two parts. In Part One, Le Roy Ladurie sketches out the living environment of Montaillou. We learn the social structure of this small village. The most important element in this structure is the domus or the household. The relationship between the peasants and the nobles is mostly jovial. There is hardly any major class division or conflict. People probably feel most different from one another in terms of beliefs. Some of them are atheists; some are Catholics; others are Cathars. Among the different groups, Le Roy Ladurie clearly favors the shepherds. He devotes a chapter on their living conditions and another chapter on their mental outlook on life.

The second part of the book explains in minute details how life is lived on a daily basis. It reads like meticulous notes taken by a serious screenwriter who tries to pinpoint textual proof for every piece of description in his or her story about an early fourteenth century French village. We are able to imagine the people moving through space doing their chores. We also have a good idea of how they express themselves and what they care and do not care. Thanks to the categories that Le Roy Ladurie gives, we can go straight to specific areas of interests if we do not feel the need to read the book in its entirety.

Le Roy Ladurie certainly does not claim his book to be about the mental universe of the people from Montaillou in the early fourteenth century. However, discussions of what, how, and why people think what they people are scattered throughout the book. For example,

Jean Maury, a vacillating Catholic but not a Cathar, had to defend himself even more firmly against Guillemette Maury, who, when he was gravely ill, tried to have him ‘consoled’ by Bélibaste. She then intended to have them embark on the endura. But Jean said to Guillemette: ‘It is for God to decide the day of my death, not me. Stop talking to me in this way or I shall have you taken [by the Inquisition].” (Le Roy Ladurie 1978: 223)

The real point that Le Roy Ladurie tries to make by quoting Jean Maury here is that people of different religious want to use even death as an opportunity to defend themselves against those who believe differently. However, he seems to touch and go very swiftly. He leaves the topic right after he makes a brilliant comment about it.

This is probably where Charles Wood’s criticism of the book lies. Wood writes, “Like others in the Annales School, La Roy Ladurie brings to his task a strikingly sophisticated knowledge of the modern social sciences (notably ethnography), but at the same time he never allows theoretical constructs to come between the reader and the people being studied” (Wood 1976: 1090). Michael Hechter, who analogies La Roy Ladurie’s book to a Martian’s report on human beings, also calls the book “a mere curiosity” rather than “a substantial piece of social scientific history” (Hechter 1980: 45). Both Wood and Hechter seem to demand more sociological analysis from La Roy Ladurie. Both think that La Roy Ladurie’s book lacks sufficient theory.

Earlier on, we have discussed The Great Cat Massacre. Darnton is not shy about giving many interpretations about a given text. He is willing to look deeper and deeper into the meanings represented by each symbol in a culture. However, Darnton’s book receives a similar, though not exactly the same, criticism as Le Roy Ladurie’s for being unconvincing and somewhat unscientific. I do not see how Darnton can dodge similar criticisms if he were to write about the mental universe of the people from Montaillou. Darnton mgiht probably engage in the intentions, motives, and subtexts of people’s interviews. Beyond those, Darnton might need to look for other kinds of materials if he were to make further arguments. Edward Benson has some ideas for what can be added for a better analysis in his book review:

The inquisition was conducted in Occitan but the record was written in Latin, and Ladurie dismisses out of hand the possibility that scribes could have misunderstood or mistranslated any of the montagnards' statements. An effort to identify the scribes' culture and compare it to the Montaillonais' would have allowed us to compare both more precisely to our own, and so made the document more fully understandable. (Benson 1978: 931)

To write about the different mentalities of the shepherds, the sedentary peasants, the clerics, and the nobles, and work out how these different groups are able to co-exist in the same space, Darnton will likely head into some new directions. However, we cannot be sure of what will happen because it will depend on what materials that Darnton may find.

Hetcher contends that another problem with Montaillou is Le Roy Ladurie’s false assumption about the background knowledge carried by the readers of the book. Hetcher is worried about that an average reader may take for granted that the world described by Le Roy Ladurie is the epitome of a European medieval village. Hetcher cautions us that “reading Montaillou without appreciating its historical context is an invitation to serious misunderstanding” (Hetcher 1980: 44). Fortunately he introduces the contextual knowledge in his book review. Basically we need to know that Montaillou is not a typical feudal village because manorialism is absent, serfs are absent, open fields are absent, and class distinctions are not prominent (Hetcher 1980: 45). Le Roy Ladurie actually also mentions these in passing in the first few chapters.

This problem with a single village as the source in Le Roy Ladurie’s book is similar to the problem with independent events in Darnton’s book. It is always possible to complain about the effectiveness and legitimacy of one incidence in representing the whole. However, after reading The Great Cat Massacre and Montaillou, we obtain a certain level of background knowledge of a particular group of people in a particular period of time. The compliments for Le Roy Ladurie and Darnton for painting a vivid picture of how French people lived in the early fourteenth century are abundant in the reviews. Reviewers use phrases like “an all-encompassing picture of Montaillou that deepens and transforms our understanding of medieval life” (Wood 1976: 1090), “a detailed ethnography” and “the most detailed portrait of the social life of this declining zone” (Hetcher 1980: 44 and 45), and “a bygone world” brought to life (Benson 1978: 931). For Darnton, the reviewers are more skeptical about his interpretations because Darnton could not prove whether his analysis is germane to the true mentality of people of eighteenth-century France. However, Darnton outlines the possibilities of where people will put their eggs and makes it clear to a modern reader.

In sum, both Le Roy Ladurie and Darnton show an admirable aptitude for working with archival materials. Their approaches are slightly different, but their goals are similar. Both are able to engage readers who do not carry special knowledge in the field. Both offer enough description and interpretation for those who want to delve deeper into certain issues. We can regard their books as guides to a lost cultural world. Through reading, we re-live the mental or physical conditions of our ancestors early into our history. Darnton would not care too much about organizing his thoughts into ethnographic categories because that is not his specialty. His structure, which is that of the mentalities of people from different social strata and the interactions of these mentalities in an overall coherent culture, seems to be in need for further support from cultural anthropologists and linguists. There is also the doubt if Darnton would be able to use the same strategy and write a book about less sophisticated people or societies where there are not many class struggles. It will be interesting to compare the mental universe of people who are preoccupied with basic survival needs in two different ages. Maybe sophistication in social structure will indeed produce sophistication in culture.

Darnton criticizes such “a historiographical tradition” (Darnton 1984: 257). In the conclusion of The Great Cat Massacre, he challenges the view that

[T]he third level (culture) somehow derives from the first two (economics and demography, and social structure); and that third-level phenomena can be understood in the same way as those on the deeper levels (by means of statistical analysis, the play of structure and conjuncture, and considerations of long-term change rather than of events). (Darnton 1984: 257)

His major oppositional argument for is that “attitudes often changed during periods of relative stability and remained relatively stable during times of upheaval” (Darnton 1984: 259). I think that it is an endless debate whether culture influences social structure first or the other way around. The influences ought to be mutual. However, it is glad to have Darnton pushing the well-known and well-established historiographical tradition the other way so that we have a different perspective on culture.

Lastly, the information in the archival pool seems fixed but also inexhaustible because the permutations of our cross interpretations of them are numerous. Culture becomes richer and richer as more people engage in its symbol war game. From a grain of sand we could see the world. Our knowledge about the mental world of those from the past fills in the over-structuralist picture of the past. By knowing what people think and feel while they live, we are less likely to jump into quick conclusions about whether the past is better or worse than the present world. This is also why in my opinion that Darnton’s and Le Roy Ladurie’s books, though not completely convincing and persuasive, teach us how to read our past. After all, the truth must lay in the attempt.


References Cited
Apter, David E.
1985 Review In The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 91, No. 3. Pp. 695-698. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2780210 [Accessed April 21, 2008]
Benson, Edward.
1978 Review In American Association of Teachers of French Stable, Vol. 51, No. 6. Pp. 931-932. http://www.jstor.org/stable/390319 [Accessed April 22, 2008]
Darnton, Robert.
1970 Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France. New York: Schocken Books.
1984 The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History. New York: Basic Books, Inc.
Hechter, Michael.
1980 Review: The Limits of Ethnographic History In American Sociological Association Stable, Vol. 9, No. 1. Pp. 44-45. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2065559 [Accessed April 22, 2008]
Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel.
1978 Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error. Barbara Bray, trans. New York: George Braziller, Inc. (Original: Montaillou, village Occitan de 1294 a 1324, France, 1975).
Lewis, P. S.
1977 Review In The English Historical Review, Vol. 92, No. 363. Pp. 371-373. http://www.jstor.org/stable/565974 [Accessed April 28, 2008]
Palmer, William.
1986 Review In Theory and Society, Vol. 15, No. 6. Pp. 918-921. http://www.jstor.org/stable/657413 [Accessed April 21, 2008]
Varenne, Hervé.
1986 Review In Ethnohistory, Vol. 33, No. 2. Pp. 219-220. http://www.jstor.org/stable/481776 [Accessed April 21, 2008]
Wood, Charles T.
1976 Review In The American Historical Review, Vol. 81, No. 5. Pp. 1090. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1852910 [accessed April 22, 2008]