The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science of Mythology Volume 1

By: Claude Levi-Strauss and John Weightman and Doreen Weightman

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Synopsis: The book starts out making an analogy between music and myth. A piece of music is only music when it has one or more motifs which repeat and vary in structured ways. So avant-garde atonal serial music is not music. Myth works exactly the same way; recurring motifs hold a story together. The motif itself is not meaningful, as only the patterning and arrangement of motifs in the composition of the music/myth gives the work significance. The notes of a song played on an instrument do not have meaning the same way that spoken words strung together in a sentence have meaning. But these instrumental or mythic performances do have meanings and comprise ideas. Claude Levi-Strauss' work is translated by Doreen and John Weightman. It adds yet another chapter to the tireless quest for a scientifically accurate, esthetically viable, and philosophically relevant cultural anthropology.