The Origin of Table Manners: Mythologiques, Volume 3 (Mythologiques Series)

The Origin of Table Manners: Mythologiques, Volume 3 (Mythologiques Series)

" The Origin of Table Manners is the third volume of a tetralogy devoted to American Indian mythology. Unlike the first two volumes ( The Raw and the Cooked, From Honey to Ashes ), which are devoted to South American myths, the present one establishes relations with North America, which is the subject of the fourth ( The Naked Man ). . . . In the course of the analysis, the myths link up with ideas of more general interest. Thus, we find discussions of numeration, of morals, and of the origin of the novel. . . . The Origin of Table Manners is thus of special interest to students of American Indian mythology, although it contains ideas of interest to other fields and even to the general reader."—Daniel C. Raffalovich, American Anthropologist "An immense anthropological erudition is here wielded by one of the world's finest minds, and the myths themselves have never been taken more seriously. . . . [Lévi-Strauss] raises issues and then resolves them with the suspenseful cunning of a mystery novelist."—John Updike, New Yorker 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.