Malinowski & the Work of Myth (Mythos: The Princeton/Bollingen Series in World Mythology) - Hardcover

Strenski, Ian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691074143 ISBN 13: 9780691074146

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1992

Synopsis

Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) was a wide-ranging thinker whose ideas affected almost every branch of the social sciences. And nowhere is this impact more evident or more persistent than on the study of myth, ritual, and religion. He articulated as never before or since a program of seeing myths as part of the functional, pragmatic, or "performed" dimension of culture - that is, as part of activities that did certain tasks for particular human communities. Spanning his entire career, this anthology brings together for the first time the important texts from his work on myth. Ivan Strenski's introduction places Malinowski in his intellectual world and traces his evolviong conception of mythology. As Strenski points out, Malinowski was a pioneer in applying the lessons of psychoanalysis to the study of culture, while at the same time he attempted to correct the generalizations of psychoanalysis with the cross-cultural researches of ethnology. With his growing interest in psychoanalysis came a conviction that myths performed essential cultural tasks in "chartering" all sort of human institutions and practices.

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691074143
• ISBN 13: 9780691074146
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 214