Arnold van Gennep facts for kids

Arnold van Gennep (born April 23, 1873 – died May 7, 1957) was a famous expert who studied different cultures and their traditions. He was from a mix of Dutch, German, and French backgrounds. He is best known for his ideas about "rites of passage" and for starting the study of folklore in France.

Life Story

Arnold van Gennep was born in a place called Ludwigsburg, which was part of Germany back then. His parents were not married, so he took his Dutch mother's last name, "van Gennep." When he was six, he moved to France with his mother. They settled in a region called Savoy after his mother married a French doctor.

Van Gennep became very well-known for his work on ceremonies called "rites of passage." He also did important research on French folklore. Many people see him as the person who truly began the study of folklore in France.

He went to Paris to study at a famous university called the Sorbonne. However, he found that the school did not offer the subjects he wanted to learn. So, he decided to study on his own. He learned Arabic, languages, ancient Egypt, and different religions. This independent way of learning stayed with him his whole life. He never held a regular teaching job at a French university.

From 1912 to 1915, he taught at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. He was asked to leave because he questioned if Switzerland was truly neutral during World War I. While there, he helped organize a museum and the first meeting about ethnography. In 1922, he visited the United States.

His most famous book is Les rites de passage (which means The Rites of Passage), published in 1909. In this book, he explained that these special ceremonies have three main parts:

• Preliminary: This is the first stage, like getting ready.
• Liminal: This is the middle stage, where someone is in-between their old and new roles.
• Post-liminal: This is the final stage, where they are fully in their new role.

Another important work he wrote was Le Manuel de folklore français contemporain (Handbook of Contemporary French Folklore). He died in 1957 in France.

How His Ideas Influenced Others

• His book The Rites of Passage greatly influenced Joseph Campbell. Campbell used Van Gennep's three-part idea to describe the "hero's journey" in his 1949 book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell's hero's journey also has three parts: Departure, Initiation, and Return.
• The anthropologist Victor Turner was also influenced by Van Gennep's work. Turner especially studied the "liminal" stage of rites of passage.

His Books and Works

• Le Tissage aux Cartons et son utilisation décorative dans l'Egypte Ancienne (1916)
• Traité comparatif des nationalités (1922)
• Tabou et Totemisme a Madagascar Etude Descriptive et Theorique (1904)
• Essai d’une théorie des langues spécialesl (1908)
• Works at archive.org
• The Rites of Passage (1909)
• Les Jeux et les Sports populaires de France: Arnold Van Gennep (textes inédits 1925) (2015)

See Also

In Spanish: Arnold van Gennep para niños