Tales from Ulithi Atoll, A Comparative Study in Oceanic Folklore Folklore Studes No. 13

Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961. First Impression. Paperbound. In quite good condition./No Dust Jacket. Royal octavo [25cm/10 inches], paperbound with pictorial covers, pp. x, 493. Illustrated with 5 maps. Please feel free to inquire as to particulars and/or additional snapshots. ... Ulithi Atoll,is an atoll in the Caroline Islands of the western Pacific ... Lessa's obituary notes, (in part): "William A. “Bill” Lessa, 89, Professor, Emeritus of anthropology at the University of California at Los Angeles, and a major contributor both to Micronesian studies and the anthropology of religion, died in Los Angeles on October 14, 1997, after a long illness.. He received his A.B. from Harvard in 1928 and worked as a Research Associate at the University of Hawaii. Bill was fascinated in folklore and, in 1961, published Tales from Ulithi Atoll, a magisterial work that is often held to be a model of the genre. A few years earlier, in 1956, he published a paper entitled “ “Oedipus-type Tales in Oceania” ,” which definitively demonstrated that the Oedipus story is not universal, as the Freudians had long held, but has a limited geographic distribution. His comprehensive ethnography, Ulithi: A Micronesian Design for Living, a mainstay of the old Holt, Rinehart and Winston "Case Studies" series, has been read and appreciated by generations of anthropology students, as well as professionals in the field."