Structural Study of Myth and Totemism

Designed to provoke controversy, the papers in this volume concentrate on two main themes: the study of myth and totemism. Starting with an English translation of La Geste d''Asdiwal, which is widely considered to be the most brilliant of all of Lévi-Strauss''s shorter expositions of his technique of myth analysis, the volume also contains criticism of this essay. The second part of the volume discusses how far Lévi-Strauss''s treatment of totemism as a system of category formation can be correlated with the facts that an ethnographer encounters in the field.First published in 1967.