My summary and understanding of the structural myth: In the past 20 years, professional anthropologists have turned away from

the studies of religion, but at the same time, amateurs who claim to belong to other disciplines became interested in it. He thinks they made a wasteland out of it. i.e. it deteriorated. Nobody had studied mythology long enough (tarried), so the situation remained chaotic as the last 50 years. Myths have been viewed as collective dreams, outcome of an esthetic play or the basis of ritual. Mythological figures were personified abstractions; either fallen gods or divined heroes. Levi-Strauss starts asking questions about myths: do we consider it something between platitude (clichs) and sophism (a fallacious argument to deceive)? Its through mythology societies express and interpret things around us esp. the astronomical and meteorological phenomena, and common feelings like love, hatred, or revenge. But why do societies need myths if we already have scientific explanations? Why use such elaborate and devious ways? Psychoanalysts and anthropologists would use myths to explain sociological and psychological fields. For example, if a myth makes a certain figure prominent, like an evil grandmother, then society agrees that grandmothers are actually evil, and that mythology reflects the social structure and relations. But if (the grandmother figure) or the actual info is conflicting, there will be a different claim, something like the purpose of this myth is to provide an outlet for repressed feelings. Whatever the situation is, you will always find a clever dialectic finding a meaning. Levi-Strauss sees that the nature of myths is arbitrary. He noticed that myths from different cultures from all over the world seem so similar. Given that they could contain anything and they are not bound/ governed by rules of accuracy or probability- why is there an astounding similarity between myths collected in widely different regions? And if the content of a myth is similar, how are we going to explain their similarity? He answers his question by looking at the structure of myths, rather than content. So in the content, you have different characters and

events but the similarities are based on their structural sameness He explains that ancient philosopher reasoned about language the way they do with mythology. They tried to discover a reason for the link between sounds and definite meaning. However, their attempt failed because they found that the same sounds could have different meanings in another language. Then they discovered it is the combination of sounds not the sound themselves that provide data. Myth is language because myth has to be told in order to exist. Its also a language with the same structures that Saussure described belonging to any language. Myth (like language) consists of both langue and parole. He adds a new element to Saussures langue and parole pointing out that the langue belongs to a reversible time and parole to non-reversible time. He means that parole as a specific example or event can only exist in linear time/ one direction, you cant turn the clock back. Langue is simply the culture itself and can exist in the present, past or future. Think of this sentence: the flowers you brought yesterday withered very quickly. If you read the sentence, you read it from left to right, one word at a time, and it takes some time to read a whole sentence. This is non-reversible. Mira, ella es la nueva novia. If you dont read the sentence, but think of it as being the structure of Spanish, it exists in a single moment, every momentyesterday as well as tomorrow. Thats reversible time. A myth combines both properties. It is both historically specific (almost always set in some time long ago) and ahistorical (the story is timeless: explains the present, the past and future). i.e. As history, myth is parole; as timeless, its langue. Levi- Strauss gives an example through comparing myth and politics. To a historian, the French Revolution happened long time ago, a non-reversible series of events that may still be felt at

present. To a French politician and his followers, the French Revolution is a sequence belonging to the past and also a timeless pattern that can be detected in the French structure and led to future developments. In that sense, it becomes a double structure, both historical and ahistorical. This explains how myth pertains both realms of langue and parole and has also an absolute third level entity that is linguistic by nature, but distinct from the other two. This proves that myth is a language of its own. That level is the story that myth tells, not the style, nor its original music. That story is special because it survives any and all translations, paraphrase, reduction, expansion without losing its basic structure. What language and myth share: 1- Made of units that are put together according to certain rules 2- These units form relations with each other, based on binary opposites, which provide the basis of the structure. Difference between language and myth:
1-

The basic units of myth are not phonemes and morphemes. They are what Levi-Strauss calls mythemes

2- While Saussure was interested in studying the relation between signs in the structure of language, Levi-Strauss concentrated on sets of relations, rather than individual relations (anthropology). He called it bundles of relations. Ex: you read an orchestra score in a unilinear series. So we will arrange them correctly, all the 1s together and 2s together and so on. A myth should be treated as an orchestra score, read by looking at the similar notes and their relation. Explanation of reading a myth: take a myth. Reduce it to small component parts (mythemes). Each mytheme is one event or position in the story of the myth. Lay them out so that they can be read both diachronically and synchronically. The story of the myth exists on diachronic axis (left to right) in non-reversible

time; the structure of the myth exists on the synchronic (top to bottom) axis, in reversible time. Oedipus: There is tensionor structural binary oppositionas present in myths from other cultures. The significance of the myth: it presents certain structural relations, in the form of binary oppositions that are universal concerns in all cultures.