Tristes Tropiques (Masterplots II: Nonfiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Claude Lévi-Strauss
- First Published: 1955
- Type of Work: Memoir/travel writing
- Time of Work: 1927-1941, 1950
- Setting: France, Atlantic ocean liners, Brazil, the Caribbean, Pakistan, and India
- Principal Characters: Claude Levi-Strauss
- Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Travel writing
- Subjects: Culture, Self-discovery, Voyages, Human race, Ambition, Anthropology or anthropologists, Work or workers, Biography
Form and Content
Claude Lévi-Strauss began Tristes Tropiques as a novel, and among the remnants of his novelistic intentions are the book’s title (literally, “sad tropics”) and a long description of an ocean sunset, a tedious purple passage that illustrates why Lévi-Strauss is not a modern master of the novel. Generally, however, his original intentions seem to have exercised a beneficial influence. Throughout most of the book his style is highly literary and readable, not the abstract scholarly style one might expect from the great structuralist...
[The entire page is 2687 words long]
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