The Way Of The Masks
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Markings: No markings
A landmark work of structural anthropology, The Way of the Masks presents Claude Lévi-Strauss's brilliant analysis of the ceremonial masks created by the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Arguing that no single mask can be understood in isolation, Lévi-Strauss illustrates how masks derive their meaning from their relationships to other masks within a broader system of mythological and social oppositions. With characteristic intellectual rigor and elegance, he uncovers the deep structural logic connecting the Salish Swaihwé mask to the Kwakwaka'wakw Dzonokwa, revealing how visual art, myth, and ritual form an interlocking symbolic language. The work stands as a masterful demonstration of the structuralist method applied to material culture, showing how objects encode the same transformational grammar that Lévi-Strauss famously identified in myth. Written with the authority of a scholar at the height of his powers, it remains an essential and intellectually exhilarating text for anyone interested in anthropology, art history, or the philosophy of culture.
Author: Claude Lévi-Strauss
Format: Hardback
Genre: Anthropology
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Markings: No markings
A landmark work of structural anthropology, The Way of the Masks presents Claude Lévi-Strauss's brilliant analysis of the ceremonial masks created by the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Arguing that no single mask can be understood in isolation, Lévi-Strauss illustrates how masks derive their meaning from their relationships to other masks within a broader system of mythological and social oppositions. With characteristic intellectual rigor and elegance, he uncovers the deep structural logic connecting the Salish Swaihwé mask to the Kwakwaka'wakw Dzonokwa, revealing how visual art, myth, and ritual form an interlocking symbolic language. The work stands as a masterful demonstration of the structuralist method applied to material culture, showing how objects encode the same transformational grammar that Lévi-Strauss famously identified in myth. Written with the authority of a scholar at the height of his powers, it remains an essential and intellectually exhilarating text for anyone interested in anthropology, art history, or the philosophy of culture.