Tristes Tropiques

by Claude Levi-Strauss, John Weightman (Translator), Doreen Weightman (Translator), Patrick Wilcken (Introduction)

Overview

A milestone in the study of culture from the father of structural anthropology

This watershed work records Claude Lévi-Strauss's search for "a human society reduced to its most basic expression." From the Amazon basin through the dense upland jungles of Brazil, Lévi-Strauss found the societies he was seeking among the Caduveo, Bororo, Nambikwara, and Tupi-Kawahib. More than merely recounting his time in their midst, Tristes Tropiques places the cultural practices of these peoples in a global context and extrapolates a fascinating theory of culture that has given the book an importance far beyond the fields of anthropology and continental philosophy. The author's fresh approach, sense of humor, and openness to the sensuous mystique of the tropics make the scientific thrust of the book eminently accessible.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143106258
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/31/2012
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009), the founder of structural anthropology, was born in Belgium and studied at the University of Paris. A member of the French Academy, he authored numerous works, including Structural Anthropology, The Savage Mind, and Myth and Meaning.

Patrick Wilcken is the author of Claude Levi-Strauss: The Father of Modern Anthropology. He lives in London.

John Weightman (1915-2004) and Doreen Weightman (d. 1985) together translated several important anthropological works of Claude Levi-Strauss and a book about Rousseau by Jean Guehenno.

Table of Contents

TRANSLATORS' NOTE

PART ONE. AN END TO JOURNEYING
1. Setting Out
2. On Board Ship
3. The West Indies
4. The Quest for Power

PART TWO. TRAVEL NOTES
5. Looking Back
6. The Making of an Anthropologist
7. Sunset

PART THREE. THE NEW WORLD
8. The Doldrums
9. Guanabara
10. Crossing the Tropic
11. Sao Paulo

PART FOUR. THE EARTH AND ITS INHABITANTS
12. Towns and Countryside
13. Pioneer Zone
14. The Magic Carpet
15. Crowds
16. Markets

PART FIVE. CADUVEO
17. Parana
18. Pantanal
19. Nalike
20. A Native Community and Its Life-Style

PART SIX. BORORO
21. Gold and Diamonds
22. Virtuous Savages
23. The Living and the Dead

PART SEVEN. NAMBIKWARA
24. The Lost World
25. In the Sertao
26. On the Line
27. Family Life
28. A Writing Lesson
29. Men, Women and Chiefs

PART EIGHT. TUPI-KAWAHIB
30. A Canoe Trip
31. Robinson Crusoe
32. In the Forest
33. The Village of the Crickets
34. The Farce of the Japim Bird
35. Amazonia
36. Seringal

PART NINE. THE RETURN
37. The Apotheosis of Augustus
38. A Little Glass of Rum
39. Taxila
40. The Kyong

INDEX

PLATES
CADUVEO A Caduveo woman with a painted face A Caduveo belle in 1895 (taken from Boggiani)
Facial painting: an original drawing by a Caduveo woman Two further facial paintings drawn by natives A Caduveo girl made ready for her puberty rites

BORORO The author's best informant, in ceremonial dress A meal in the Men's House Bringing out the mariddo
A funeral ceremony (photograph by M. Rene Silz)

NAMBIRWARA The Nambikwara group on the move Sabane, the sorcerer The chief of the Wakletocu A Nambikwara woman piercing mother-of-pearl from river shells The siesta The native method of carrying a baby Day-dreaming A Nambikwara smile

TUPI-KAWAHIB The Munde village square A Munde woman with her child A Tupi-Kawahib man (Potien) skinning a monkey Taperahi, the Tupi-Kawahib chief Kunhatsin, Taperahi's chief wife, carrying her child Pwcreza, Taperahi's son Penhana, the young wife shared by the two brothers Maruabai, the co-wife of Chief Taperahi

FIGURES
1 An ancient figa, found at Pompeii
2 A calvary cross, from the State of Sao Paulo
3 The axle of an ox-cart
4 Caingang pottery
5 A water-jar
6 Three specimens of Caduveo pottery
7 Two wooden statuettes
8 Caduveo jewerery
9 Two statuettes representing mythological figures
10 11 Caduveo patterns
12 17 Motifs used in body painting
18 19 Drawings made by a Caduveo boy
20 Two face-paintings
21 A pattern painted on leather
22 23 Body paintings, as recorded in 1895 and 1935
24 25 Motifs used in face- and body-painting
26 A facial painting
27 The penis sheath
28 A lip ornament and earrings
29 Plan of Kejara village
30 A wooden club for killing fish
31 Bows with clan decorations
32 Arrow-ends with clan decorations
33 Emblazoned penis sheaths
34 A black pottery bowl
35 Two specimens of the Bororo 'pocket-knife'
36 A pendant decorated with jaguars' teeth
37 Crowns of dried and painted straw
38 A bull-roarer
39 Ceremonial earrings
40 A Bororo painting representing religious objects
41 A Bororo painting representing an officiant, trumpets, a rattle and various ornaments
42 A diadem of macaw feathers
43 A diagram of the apparent and real structure of the Bororo village
44 45 Ancient Mexicans, from south-eastern Mexico and the Gulf Coast
46 47 Bas-reliefs ('the dancers'), from Chavin, northern Peru, and Monte Alban, southern Mexico
48 Hopewell, eastern United States
49 Chavin, northern Peru
50 Hopewell, eastern United States
51 Bamboo splinters defending the approach to the village
52 53 Details of hut wall-paintings

What People are Saying About This

Elizabeth Hardwick

Tristes Tropiques is a classical journey of discovery, a quest for the past and for the realization of self... It is a work of anthropology, grandly speculative and imaginative... a work of science, history, and a rational prose poetry, springing out of the multifariousness of the landscape... Levi-Strauss is pursuing his professional studies, but he is also creating literature.

Susan Sontag

Triste Tropiques is an intensely personal book. Like Montaigne's Essays and Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, it is an intellectual autobiography, an exemplary personal history in which a whole view of the human situation, an entire sensibility, is elaborated... [It] is a masterpiece.