The Rites of Passage

by Arnold van Gennep

Book Overview

A CLASSIC WORK OF ANTHROPOLOGY--OVER SEVENTY THOUSAND COPIES SOLD With a new introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winner David I. Kertzer Arnold van Gennep's masterwork, The Rites of Passage, has been a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226848493
• Release Date: July 1961
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.5" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Landmark Anthropology Text

This is one of the most interesting, well-researched, and innovative books I've ever read. Van Gennep provides an entire philo-anthropological system for understanding ritual and the rites of passage. A truly powerful piece of scholarship that establishes a framework based on inductive first-hand research, that compares and contrasts itself to other texts, and that has relevance to life. This is the Anthropological equivalent to Aristotle's Poetics. It is dense, it is well-reasoned, and it justifies its categorizations. Not an easy read, but extraordinarily worthwhile. Must read for people interested in philosophy, myth, psychology, anthropology, cultural studies, theater, and literature.

A book worth reading

This book is worth reading. As an early work (published in 1908), it has influenced many Anthropologists. Amazingly, it was not translated into English from French until 1960, so students (and others) who wished to read it had to be either fluent in French or willing to translate it sentence by sentence.Although many of its concepts are considered elementary by the unknowing today, it was a revolutionary look at cross-cultural phenomenon, namely the rites surrounding territories, pregnancy/childbirth, childhood, initiation, bethrothal/marriage and funerals.It is a great basis for a complete understanding of the history of Anthropology.

A good text in anthropology

It suggests a theortical framework for explaining many cultural beliefs.