>> Hmm, I can't find that word in my French dictionary, which probably
means I
>> need a better one. What does he mean by "bricolage"?
>
> It's a real trendy word nowadays in literary criticism. It appears
to mean a
>mish mash of things, an eclectic collection, the kind of stuff you find
on a
>collectors shelf, much of it "kitsh." Don't ask me why everybody and
his
>uncle's cousin in literary theory just has to jump at the word and
replicate it
>to the point of banality. At any rate, invented languages are
collections of
>the parts of real languages. It's supposed to show that he thinks of
invented
>languages as doing violence to real languages, replicating them by
taking them
>apart,
>or some such thing. He talks about the "impoverishment" of natural
languages
>and other such nonsense..
Those may be the word's current connotations, but its use in litcrit
surely stems from Levi-Strauss's usage of it. He compared myth to
bricolage, which he defined as a folk-art form, which consisted of
taking everyday objects and combining them in unexpected ways to create
artworks. He saw myth-making as parallel to bricolage, in that it used
standard and well-known themes in new arrangements every time.
I don't think much of Levi-Strauss's anthropological theories, but I
don't think he at least meant to disparage myths by calling them
bricolages.
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