Myth and Meaning / / Claude Lévi-Strauss.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Toronto Press eBook-Package Archive 1933-1999
• VerfasserIn: Lévi-Strauss, Claude,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2017]; ©1978
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Series: Heritage
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (64 p.)

Ever since the rise of science and the scientific method in the seventeenth century, we have rejected mythology as the product of superstitious and primitive minds. Only now are we coming to a fuller appreciation of the nature and role of myth in human history. In these five lectures originally prepared for the CBC, Claude Lévi-Strauss, one of the world's greatest living thinkers, offers the insights of a lifetime spent interpreting myths and trying to discover their significance for human understanding. The lectures begin with a discussion of the historical split between mythology and science and the evidence that mythic levels of understanding are being reintegrated in our approach to knowledge. In an extension of his theme, Professosr Lévi-Strauss analyses what we have called 'primitive' thinking and discusses some universal features of human mythology. The final two lectures outline the functional relationship between mythology and history and the structural relationship between mythology and music. Combining history, anthropology, and philosophy, this book provides a broad and penetrating perspective on the contemporary western world.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- The 1977 Massey Lectures -- Contents -- An Introduction -- One. The Meeting of Myth and Science -- Two. ‘Trimitive’ Thinking and the ‘Civilized’ Mind -- Three. Harelips and Twins: The Splitting of a Myth -- Four. When Myth Becomes History -- Five. Myth and Music