LITERATURE AND CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
LITERATURE AND CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Summary/Abstract: Cultural patterns in fiction cannot be understood as isolated events; they belong to a context and have to be viewed holistically. While a cultural anthropologist is an active observer and recorder of facts through time and space, a fiction writer presents facts, happened or imaginary, subjectively and judgmentally. The former approaches a human being holistically, analyzing all social and cultural elements that have shaped him through time and space, while the latter has a reductionist view at the time and place described in the book.The article raises the importance of the interdisciplinary research and the need for humanistic teachers and students to see literature and cultural anthropology as informing each other. This confluence would enhance the attention given to vanishing, primitive or ethnic cultures. Also, this convergence between the objective lens of the cultural anthropologist and the subjective perspective of the writer would allow the reader to have fewer misconceived ideas about cultural patterns and behaviors.

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