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Arnold van Gennep

FRENCH ANTHROPOLOGIST

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Alternative Title: Charles-Arnold Kurr van Gennep

Arnold van Gennep, in full Charles-Arnold Kurr van Gennep, (born 1873, Württemberg, Ger.—died 1957), French
ethnographer and folklorist, best known for his studies of the rites of passage of various cultures.

Although Gennep was born in Germany and had a Dutch father, he lived most of his life and received his education in France,
his mother’s native country. Gennep learned a remarkable number of languages, 18 by his own count, and thus could
effectively use linguistic and philological facts in his ethnographic studies. Most of his work was done outside of, and
occasionally at odds with, the academic community, which he himself described in Les Demi-Savants (1911; The Semi-
Scholars).

Gennep’s major work was Les Rites de Passage (1909; The Rites of Passage), in which he systematically compared those
ceremonies that celebrate an individual’s transition from one status to another within a given society. He found a tripartite
sequence in ritual observance: separation, transition, and incorporation. Gennep offered interpretations of the signi cance of
these rites as forms of social regeneration, based on such natural symbols as death and rebirth.

Gennep also made studies of European folklore, viewing folk literature and practices as aspects of a living culture rather than
as remains of a dead one. His writings include the monumental Manuel de folklore français contemporain (1937–58; “Manual
of Contemporary French Folklore”). He also edited the “Ethnographie-Folklore-Religions–Préhistoire” section in the
publication Mercure de France and wrote Religions, moeurs et légendes; Essais d’ethnographie et de linguistique (1908–14;
“Religions, Customs, and Legends; Essays of Ethnology and Linguistics”).

This article was most recently revised and updated by Elizabeth Prine Pauls, Associate Editor.

LEARN MORE in these related Britannica articles:

rite of passage: Nature and signi cance

>Arnold van Gennep, who coined the phrase rites of passage. Van Gennep saw such rites as means by which
individuals are eased, without social disruption, through the dif culties of transition from one social role to another. On
the basis of an extensive survey of preliterate…

ritual: Life crisis

…passage, and the French anthropologist Arnold van Gennep’s study of these rituals remains the classic book on the
subject. See also death rite.…
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 Ritual  
Ritual, the performance of ceremonial acts prescribed by tradition or by sacerdotal decree. Ritual is a speci c,
observable mode of behaviour exhibited by all known societies. It is thus possible to view ritual as a way of de ning or
describing humans. Human beings are sometimes described or…

Württemberg

Württemberg, former German state, successively a countship, a duchy, a kingdom, and a republic before its partition after World War II.
Its territory approximated the central and eastern areas of present-day Baden-Württemberg (q.v.) Land (state), of Germany. For the last
period of its separate…

Continent

Continent, one of the larger continuous masses of land, namely, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica,
Europe, and Australia, listed in order of size. (Europe and Asia are sometimes considered a single continent, Eurasia.)
There is great variation in the sizes of continents; Asia…

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2 REFERENCES FOUND IN BRITANNICA ARTICLES

Assorted References

theory of passage rites

(In ritual: Life crisis)

(In rite of passage: Nature and signi cance)

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Arnold van Gennep

QUICK FACTS

BORN
1873
Württemberg, Germany

DIED
1957 (aged 84)

SUBJECTS OF STUDY
Europe
rite of passage
folklore

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