TAKE- HOME SECTION. Literature and Language Essay.

TAKE-HOME SECTION
Part A: 1 Short Essay (choose ONE out of the 3 topics) (14 points)
A short (no more than 22 lines) text written in correct English and full sentences (no bullet-point lists).
1. Magic and Religion.
2. During the “Enlightened” 18th Century, how does the supernatural manifest itself in contemporary culture? (course question)
3. How do you explain the “return” of witchcraft and other parallel beliefs in modern societies?
Topic # ___ (Additional pages or lines will not be read or taken into account for the grade.)
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Part B: Summary of a text (6 points)
Choose 1 (one) of the following excerpts from The Savage Mind by Claude Levi-Strauss (and one only), and give a short summary of it (no criticism or discussion):
Magical operations, on the other hand, appear to him as additions to the objective order of the universe: they present the same necessity to those performing them as the sequence of natural causes; in which the agent believes himself simply to be inserting supplementary links through his rites. He therefore supposes that he observes them from outside and as if they did not emanate from himself.
This rectification of traditional perspectives enables us to dispose of the spurious problem which some see in the “normal” recourse to fraud and trickery during magical operations. For, if the system of magic rests entirely on the belief that man can intervene in natural determinism to complete or modify its course, then it hardly matters whether he does so a little more or a little less: fraud is consubstantial with magic and, strictly speaking, the sorcerer never “cheats.” The difference between his theory and his practice is one of degree, not of kind.
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Magical thought is not to be regarded as a beginning, a rudiment, a sketch, a part

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