The Jealous Potter (Paperback)

by Claude Levi-Strauss (Author), Benedicte Chorier (Translator) "A Jivaro myth and its variants..." (more)
Key Phrases: anal greediness, chthonian dwarfs, oral incontinence, South American, North America, The Origin of Table Manners (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In Iroquois mythology, comets or meteors may trigger a husband to eject his wife through a hole as if she were excrement. While psychoanalysts could have a field day with this belief, French anthropologist Levi-Strauss insists that Freudians err in deciphering myths as if they employed a single symbolic code. Sexual, cosmic, zoological and technological meanings usually overlap, he claims. As proof, Levi-Strauss investigates the multiple associations of symbols common to North and South American Indian tales. Potters' kilns, fireballs, the sloth and the goatsucker all figure in a hemisphere-wide myth system pieced together by the eminent structuralist in this dense study. Themes dear to psychoanalysisoedipal conflict, oral sadism, anal retentivenessare shown to be common knowledge among Amerindian tribes. Levi-Strauss also uncovers a myth of the Jivaro Indians of the Andes that anticipates Freud's scenario of the primal horde in Totem and Taboo.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal
Levi-Strauss calls his latest work "playful exercise" in this recapitulation of major structuralist theories. Using examples from the mythologies of mostly the Americas, and references to the works of Sebillot, Saussure, and Freud, Levi-Strauss shows the "tranformational relationships" and "symbolic equivalences" which obtain in myths from various regions. The author argues that culture-bearers unconsciously operate through codes because "every myth confronts a problem . . . " and "each code brings out latent properties in a given realm of experience . . . ." An accessible format; for academic libraries. Winnie Lambrecht, Brown Univ., Providence, R.I.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 260 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (December 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226474828
• ISBN-13: 978-0226474823
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,517,311 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond the Birdnester, January 5, 2006

By	Charles E. Nydorf (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Towards the end of "The Naked Man", the last volume of "Mythologies", a series that Levi-Strauss dedicated to following up on all the transformations of a single myth, which he calls "the Birdnester", throughout the indigenous cultures of the Americas, the author tackles a vexing question. Is it possible that his transformations have been defined so broadly that any myth at all can be considered a form of the Birdnester? His reply is that the native cultures of the Americas have another complex of myths which cannot be treated as simple variants of the Birdnester and which he therefore omitted from his study. Whereas the Birdnester myths present a theory of the origin of cooking fire, the myths in this other series present a theory of the origin of potter's fire. In the "Jealous Potter", Levi-Strauss finally presents this second group of myths. As always with Levi-Strauss, the reader is in for a fanstastic trip with innumerable insights into human cultures. One difficulty in reading Levi-Strauss: He mentions a a dazzling array of native groups and it is difficult to keep them all straight. I have found that the best solution is to consult the maps in John Bierhost's survey of American mythology. Here as elsewhere, Levi-Strauss's work provides a wide prospect of future studies. For example, one would like to know how the two complexes of myths are distributed in the Americas (and even beyond them). This would certainly shed light on cultural history of the Americas and the world.