Representations and Contradictions: Ambivalence Towards Images, Theatre, Fiction, Relics and Sexuality [Paperback]

Jack Goody (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0631205268 | ISBN-13: 978-0631205265 | Publication Date: October 30, 1997

This is an investigation of how societies and cultures in different times and places have represented themselves in images and words.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Throughout human history societies and cultures have utilized representation, in the forms of images and words, as an essential means of expression and communication. This book is an investigation of the ways in which such representations relate to religion, ideology and culture, ranging across eastern, western and African cultures, and over the last two millennia.

Representations are basic to human communication and expression. They occupy a central terrain in social, political and cultural consciousness and identity – mimetic, symbolic, and fictive. Jack Goody seeks to understand their meanings, and to show what they reveal about the societies in which they manifest themselves.

The author explores the uneven distribution of representations in human societies and at different times within the same society. He shows how prone representations are to change during and after revolutions, and explains what lies behind their absence or suppression: the widespread scarcity, for examples, of figurative representation, and the decline of secular literature, between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance, and the suppression of theatre during the Reformation.

Jack Goody’s accessible approach to his subject will ensure that his book appeals equally to anthropologists and historians, and to all students of culture, art history and literature.

About the Author

Jack Goody is a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, and was William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology at Cambridge from 1973 to 1985. He has written extensively on the family, memory, ritual, and literacy, in a wide variety of regional and historical contexts. His many books include Death, Property and the Ancestors (1962), The Domestication of the Savage Mind (1977), The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (1983), and The Culture of Flowers (1993).

Product Details

• Paperback: 293 pages
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell (October 30, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0631205268
• ISBN-13: 978-0631205265
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #658,776 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.