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The author Robert Darnton argues in his article “The Great Cat Massacre” the harsh conditions of the daily life of an apprentices. More specifically, Darnton uses statistics and sources to establish his credibility, by mentioning various stories to appeal and persuade to his audience. For example, Darnton commences by intriguing his audience by the statement “The funniest thing that ever happened…”. He successfully makes the reader question what he will say. The author approaches with unimaginable statements keeping the reader intrigued from start to finish. Darnton then uses valid sources by stating the testimony of Nicolas Contat in the shop rue Saint-Severin. Nicolas Contat proceeds by explaining first-hand the life of an apprentice was tough and vulgarized. Moreover, the demise of the cats is already a questionable issue itself. Especially, how the bourgeoisie put cats in a pedestal. …show more content…
For example, Darnton writes “They slept in a filthy freezing room, rose before dawn, ran errands all day while dodging insults…” This questions the morality and structure of Paris in the late 1730’s. To conclude, Darnton successfully gets his argument across and explains the atrocious structure of the 1730’s, by using sources to appeal and persuade the audience. Barbara A. Hanawalt in her work “Childrearing Among the Lower Classes of Late Medieval England” argues the rearing of children after the age of 7. Furthermore, Hanawalt explains the circumstances in society that leads for the system to be atrocious. Those of nobility in urban settings are less common to meet the same experience than ordinary people such as; calamities or homicides. Additionally, those in power are except from a wide spectrum of judicial process and coroners request. Consequently, the nobility will never experience the harshness of the lower class or want modification of the
Paris in 1850 was in an precarious condition. In the Prologue, Harvey compares the state of Paris to a double straitjacket, each of which fortified the other. The first straitjacket refers to the economic crisis that occurred during the late 1840’s. During this time, there appeared to be an upsurge of rural workers coming into Paris from the countryside searching for employment or assistance. With this sudden increase in the population of Paris came a high rate of unemployment and an overaccumulation of capital wealth. This surplus of labour, however, was problematic, since employment was scarce in comparison to the population. Predictably, this situation instigated thoughts of reformations in the capitalist system in place. This economic catastrophe, Harvey argues, is one of the reasons that urged Louis-Napoleon and Haussmann to
Mortimer describes their laws, their medicine, their eating and dressing habits, and their entertainment. The purpose of The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England is to give readers a vivid look into the past, into one of the most celebrated eras in history, with hopes that the modern era learns that “the past is not just something to be studied; it is also something to be lived” (Front Flap). Throughout the book, Mortimer makes several major interpretations of the society of
Walk through a door, and enter a new world. For John, raised in home resplendent with comfort and fine things, Ginny’s family’s apartment above the fruit market is a radically different environment than his own. Economic differences literally smack him in the face, as he enters the door and walks into towel hung to dry. “First lesson: how the poor do laundry” (Rylant 34). In this brief, potent scene, amidst “shirts, towels, underwear, pillowcases” hanging in a room strung with clotheslines, historical fiction finds crucial expression in the uncomfortable blush of a boy ready for a first date and unprepared for the world in which he finds himself.
In view of a notable female writer in the early modern Europe, the life of low born were not only trivial and insignificant to the higher classes, but also had to experience the unavoidable hardships and impossible tasks that were forced onto them. However, the poverty level of peasant are much worse than courtiers in 17th century. To sum up, the life of contemporaries of the third estate was quite difficult, as they constantly face the threat of epidemic disease, the shortage of food, abuse from authority, warfare, the lack of moral laws, equality laws and gender laws. The entire system of three estate puts the low born at a huge disadvantage, and deliberately forced them to be at the bottom of the hierarchy with slight chance to move
The Restoration Period (1660-1700) was a period of social, political and philosophical turmoil, which laid the foundation for future centuries. This period was marked by an advance in colonization and trade and by the birth of the Whig and Tory parties. In poetry, works of Alexander Pope and Anne Finch and a number of other poets distinguishes the Restoration. But, there are several objections from these poets; one particular opposition occurs between Pope’s The Rape of the Lock and Anne Finch.
Edgar Allan Poe was known for his writings in literature during the Romanticism era. Poe shows great symbolism and Romanticism in his two short stories, “The Black Cat” and “The Masque of the Red Death”. Poe wrote in diverse types of Romanticism in these two litterateurs; “The Black Cat” is a battle inside himself with his feelings on slavery, and “The Masque of the Red Death” is more of the spiritual thoughts of escaping one's true faith.
The Bedford Introduction to Literature. 5th edition. Boston & New York: Bedford/St. Martin's Press, 1999. http://www.martinspress 1564 - 1612 -.
The City of Dreadful Delight starts with some cultural analysis of the historical background that helped to produce the social landscape of Victorian London. In discussing the transformation of London, Walkowitz argues for seeing more than merely a shift from one type of city to another but rather a conflicted layering of elite male spectatorship, the “scientific” social reform, and W. T. Stead's New Journalism. Here Walkowitz investigates the “Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon.” The “Maiden Tribute” consisted of a series of articles, authored by Stead and presented in the penny press, which exposed the sale of girls into prostitution. According to Walkowitz, these stories relied on the new scientific methods of social investigation, but the...
The setting is London in 1854, which is very different to anything we know today. Johnson’s description of this time and place makes it seem like a whole other world from the here and now....
Stillinger, Jack, Deidre Lynch, Stephen Greenblatt, and M H. Abrams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume D. New York, N.Y: W.W. Norton & Co, 2006. Print.
Pope, Alexander. The Rape of the Lock. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century. Ed. Lawrence Lipking, M. H. Abrams, and S. Greenblatt. New York: Norton, 2000. 2525-2544.
The setting for this novel was a constantly shifting one. Taking place during what seems to be the Late Industrial Revolution and the high of the British Empire, the era is portrayed amongst influential Englishmen, the value of the pound, the presence of steamers, railroads, ferries, and a European globe.
The time preceding and following the French Revolution was not only an era of change, but also a time of deceit and suspicion in England and France. In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens thoroughly illustrates through symbols what every stage of the French Revolution looked like from the point of view of revolutionaries, aristocrats, and bystanders. The events that caused the changes in France were acts of injustice towards the peasant class. However, when the Revolution began, the revolutionaries started treating the aristocrats inhumanely. Blue flies, knitting, the shadow, and the grindstone are the symbols that best portray the theme of man’s inhumanity towards his fellow man in A Tale of Two Cities.
The story taking place in England is likewise crucial to the setting. England had a more solid social structure at the time than for example America, so it was easier to spot the circumstances that k...
Nothing gives us a better idea of medieval life than Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Written in the late fourteenth century in the vernacular, it gives us an idea of the vast spectrum of people that made up the different classes within society. The poem describes the knightly class, the clergy, and those who worked for a living, thus describing the different classes as well. Chaucer gives us a cross-section of fourteenth century society by giving us the small details of people’s clothing, demeanor and professions; therefore giving us information on the lower and middle classes, not discussed in literature before.