Lit Theory - Levi-Strauss - Tristes Tropiques

Claude Levi-Strauss

1.      Tristes Tropiques

a.     The profound change writing brough to human existence.

                                                          i.     Vastly increases man’s ability to preserve knowledge.

1.     Can be thought of as an artificial memory.

2.     A library that more clearly documents history. That,

3.     Provides the ability to organize the present and the future.

                                                         ii.     The people with writing can better move forward and with more rapidity.

                                                       iii.     People without writing can only go back to the life span of the oldest living generation.

b.     Little is known about the origin of writing.

                                                          i.     The current era has benefited greatly from writing.

                                                         ii.     Ancient civilizations, with and without writing, achieved great feats.

                                                       iii.     Writing in and of itself does not explain the rapid expansion.

c.     Writing is consistent with creation of large cities.

                                                          i.     Writing seemed to have more of an exploitive effect on people rather than an enlightening effect.

                                                         ii.     Theorizes that writing was first used to facilitate slavery.

                                                       iii.     Using writing for intellectual and aesthetic pleasure was secondary.

d.     Theorizes that the ruling class uses writing to subjugate the lower classes.

                                                          i.     Used an example where some within a village that had no knowledge of writing were more sensible than those capable of reading.

Works Cited

Levi-Strauss, Claude. Tristes Tropiques.  The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.  Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al.  2^nd ed. New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 2010. 1273-1286 Print.