Verging on extra-vagance : anthropology, history, religion, literature, arts-- showbiz /
Author / Creator: | Boon, James A. |
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Imprint: | Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c1999. |
Description: | xxi, 361 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. |
Language: | English |
Subject: | |
Format: | Print Book |
URL for this record: | http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/3788551 |
Summary: | In this book, James Boon ranges through history and around the globe in a series of provocative reflections on the limitations, attractions, and ambiguities of cultural interpretation. The book reflects the unusual keyword of its title, extra-vagance, a term Thoreau used to refer to thought that skirts traditional boundaries. Boon follows Thoreau's lead by broaching subjects as diverse as Balinese ritual, Montaigne, Chaucer, Tarzan, Perry Mason, opera, and the ideas of Jacques Derrida, Ruth Benedict, Kenneth Burke, and Mary Douglas. He makes creative and often playful leaps among eclectic texts and rituals that do not hold single, fixed meanings, but numerous, changing, and exceedingly specific ones. |
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Physical Description: | xxi, 361 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. |
Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (p. [315]-356) and index. |
ISBN: | 0691016321 0691016313 |