The Naked Man: Mythologiques, Volume 4 / Edition 1

by Claude Lévi-Strauss, John Weightman, Doreen Weightman

Overview

"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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226474960
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	11/08/1990
Series:	Mythologiques Series , #4
Edition description:	1
Pages:	746
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.80(d)

About the Author

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009) is the most important anthropologist of the twentieth century, a leader in structuralist thought, and one of the key figures in the history of modern thought. He held the chair of social anthropology at the Collège de France between 1959 and 1982 and was elected a member of the Académie française in 1973. His many influential works include Tristes Tropiques, Structural Anthropology, Totemism, and Wild Thought, among others. The Press has published many English editions of his works.

Table of Contents

Table of Symbols
Prologue
Part One: Family Secrets
1. The Hidden Child
2. Foolish Women and Wise Virgins
Part Two: Echo Effects
Part Three: Scenes from Private Life
1. The Lewd Grandmother
2. In Death as in Life
3. '. . . These Twin Mirrors'
Part Four: Scenes of Provincial Life
1. Soluble Fishes
2. The Market Place
3. The Noisy Scullion
4. The Proper Use of Excrement
Part Five: Bitter Knowledge
1. The Visit to the Sky
2. The Two Blind Hags
3. Cosmopolitanism and Exogamy
Part Six: Going Back to the Sources
1. Fire and Rain
2. Junctions
Part Seven: The Dawn of Myths
1. Binary Operators
2. One Myth Only
Finale
Bibliography
Index of Myths
General Index