The Naked Man

Mythologiques #4

by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Doreen Weightman (Translator)

" 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

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction, Mythology

746 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist, well-known for his development of structural anthropology. He was born in Belgium to French parents who were living in Brussels at the time, but he grew up in Paris. His father was an artist, and a member of an intellectual French Jewish family. Lévi-Strauss studied at the University of Paris. From 1935-9 he was Professor at the University of Sao Paulo making several expeditions to central Brazil. Between 1942-1945 he was Professor at the New School for Social Research. In 1950 he became Director of Studies at the Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes. In 1959 Lévi-Strauss assumed the Chair of Social Anthroplogy at the College de France. His books include The Raw and the Cooked, The Savage Mind, Structural Anthropology and Totemism (Encyclopedia of World Biography).

Some of the reasons for his popularity are in his rejection of history and humanism, in his refusal to see Western civilization as privileged and unique, in his emphasis on form over content and in his insistence that the savage mind is equal to the civilized mind.

Lévi-Strauss did many things in his life including studying Law and Philosophy. He also did considerable reading among literary masterpieces, and was deeply immersed in classical and contemporary music.

Lévi-Strauss was awarded the Wenner-Gren Foundation's Viking Fund Medal for 1966 and the Erasmus Prize in 1975. He was also awarded four honorary degrees from Oxford, Yale, Havard and Columbia. Strauss held several memberships in institutions including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society (Encyclopedia of World Biography).

Reviews

[A YOGAM · Rating 4 out of 5]

3. L’Origine des Manières de Table (Der Ursprung der Tischsitten)
Hier entlarvt Lévi-Strauss das korrekte Hantieren mit Messer und Gabel als strategische Aufteilung des Sinnlichen, die jede bloße Etikette zur Nebensache degradiert. Selbst der „Alte aus Rhöndorf“ hätte wohl gestaunt, wie viel politische Ordnung und soziale Disziplin in der scheinbar banalen Frage steckt, wie man sich bei Tisch zu benehmen hat.

DIE ZUORDNUNG VON BAND 3 UND BAND 4 STIMMEN LEIDER NICHT!!!!!!
Dieser vierte Band bildet die souveräne Krönung des Gesamtwerks und führt zum quintessenziellen Kern des menschlichen Geistes – jenseits aller mythologischen Verkleidungen. Ein grandioser Crunch der Vernunft, der deutlich macht, dass am Ende aller Erzählungen die fast mathematische Schönheit der Struktur als eigentliches Erbe der Menschheit verbleibt.

[Mariam Rawwas · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fourth and final volume of Mythologiques ends in North America, as Lévi-Strauss examines the zoological system of indigenous myth in conjunction with its cosmological and cultural counterparts.

[James F · Rating 3 out of 5]

The fourth and last volume of Mythologiques, The Naked Man concentrates primarily on the mythology of the Native American populations in the area of Oregon and Washington, with some analogies to the Plains Indians and other parts of North America, and of course compares them with the South American myths from the first two volumes.

Among the sets of myths he discusses are the "Loon Woman" group, the "Lewd Grandmother" group, and the group concerning the war between the earth and sky people. He considers all the groups of North and South American myths to be a set of transformations of "One Myth" (the title of the penultimate chapter.)

The final chapter answers criticisms by (unfortunately unnamed) "philosophers" and then becomes a long digression giving a somewhat odd theory of music. There is an index of all the myths referred to in all four volumes, by the tribes they belong to (about 750 myths and well over a thousand variants.)

These four volumes are rather difficult and make a huge demand on the memory, but are vital for understanding the structuralist project (and remember that the "postmodernists" are also called the "poststructualists".)

[Serena]

This four volume encyclopedic nightmare of structuralism is fascinating, but not likely something I will ever finish.

[Adrian Colesberry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really struggled through this book. Tough going. But I think I got a feel of his thought.