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Title: Myth and Meaning : Cracking the Code of Culture by Claude Levi-Strauss ISBN: 0-8052-1038-5 Publisher: Schocken Books Pub. Date: 14 March, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.25 (4 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Good Introduction to Levi-Strauss but falters at the end
Comment: This book, based on interviews Levi-Strauss conducted with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in the late '70s, is extremely clear and easy to understand for non-anthropologists like myself. He explains his views about how rational science and mythology branched off from each other in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, leading us to a situation where today we experience life differently that do 'primitive' tribes who use myths to explain the world around them. Levi-Strauss notes, however, that, while these peoples may not be as accurate in describing the world as we are with our modern science, they do possess a great deal of knowledge which we have lost on an individual level, i.e., knowledge about plants and stars. Mythology, he claims, functions like history and science for these people; for an example Levi-Strauss focuses his attention on the meaning of American myths about twins, hare(lips) and babies born feet first.
All this is quite well laid out and easy to read. However, the last chapter deals with music and mythology, and here Levi-Strauss badly missteps. He postulates that the decline in mythology that accompanied the rise of modern science coincided with the creation of great music by the likes of Bach, Haydn and Mozart that drew upon the same sources of inspiration as mythology. He spends several pages in a structural critique of Wagner's Ring which, albeit fascinating, is highly questionable. Furthermore, at the end of the book he suggests, quite wildly, that serial music is now poised to overtake the modern novel, which arose at the same time as modern science, in importance.
This weak section at the end notwithstanding, however, this is a good book for anyone interested in Levi-Strauss's groundbreaking work.
Rating: 4
Summary: Great Infro to Levi-Strauss
Comment: If you trying to understand what drives Levi-Srauss to write, then this is the book you've been looking for...
Rating: 5
Summary: A good short intro to Levi-Strauss
Comment: This is an excellent and very short intro to the work the of famed anthropologist Levi-Strauss. It breaks down to a large extent his basic ideas about the structural analysis of myth and provides an opportunity into the thoughts and opinions of the father of structural anthropology. It's mostly taken as a transcript from a series of lectures he gave outlining major themes he's covered in his work.
If you like this book and wish to read more by him I'd recommend The Raw and the Cooked and his classic work, Structural Anthropology.
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Title: Structural Anthropology by Claude Levi-Strauss ISBN: 046509516X Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: January, 2000 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Savage Mind by Claude Leevi Strauss, Claude Levi-Strauss ISBN: 0226474844 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: June, 1966 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: The Raw and the Cooked: Mythologiques by Claude Levi-Strauss, John Weightman, Doreen Weightman ISBN: 0226474879 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: March, 1983 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Tristes Tropiques by Claude Levi-Strauss, John Weightman, Doreen Weightman ISBN: 0140165622 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: August, 1992 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard by Kiran Desai ISBN: 0385493703 Publisher: Anchor Pub Pub. Date: 18 May, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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