The Naked Man
Author | : Claude Lévi-Strauss |
Publisher | : University of Chicago Press |
Total Pages | : 754 |
Release | : 1990-11-08 |
ISBN-10 | : 0226474968 |
ISBN-13 | : 9780226474960 |
Rating | : 4/5 (68 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: "The Naked Man is the fourth and final volume [of Mythologiques], written by the most influential and probably the most controversial anthropologist of our time. . . . Myths from North and South America are set side by side to show their transformations: in passing from person to person and place to place, a myth can change its content and yet retain its structural principles. . . . Apart from the complicated transformations discovered and the fascinating constructions placed on these, the stories themselves provide a feast."—Betty Abel, Contemporary Review "Lévi-Strauss uses the structural method he developed to analyze and 'decode' the mythology of native North Americans, focusing on the area west of the Rockies. . . . [The author] takes the opportunity to refute arguments against his method; his chapter 'Finale' is a defense of structural analysis as well as the closing statement of this four-volume opus which started with an 'Ouverture' in The Raw and the Cooked."—Library Journal "The culmination of one of the major intellectual feats of our time."—Paul Stuewe, Quill and Quire