structuralism Structuralism is an intellectual current and methodological approach, primarily in the social sciences, that interprets elements of human culture by way of their relationship to a broader system. It works to uncover the structural patterns t ...

-influenced studies of

mythology Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...

, a mytheme is a fundamental generic unit of narrative structure (typically involving a relationship between a character, an event, and a theme) from which myths are thought to be constructed—a minimal unit that is always found shared with other, related mythemes and reassembled in various ways ("bundled") or linked in more complicated relationships. For example, the myths of Greek

Adonis In Greek mythology, Adonis (; ) was the mortal lover of the goddesses Aphrodite and Persephone. He was considered to be the ideal of male beauty in classical antiquity. The myth goes that Adonis was gored by a wild boar during a hunting trip ...

and Egyptian

Osiris Osiris (, from Egyptian ''wikt:wsjr, wsjr'') was the ancient Egyptian deities, god of fertility, agriculture, the Ancient Egyptian religion#Afterlife, afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and vegetation in ancient Egyptian religion. He was ...

share several elements, leading some scholars to conclude that they share a source, i.e. images passed down in cultures or from one to another, being ascribed new interpretations of the action depicted, as well as new names in various readings of

icon An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Catholic Church, Catholic, and Lutheranism, Lutheran churches. The most common subjects include Jesus, Mary, mother of ...

Overview

Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss ( ; ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a Belgian-born French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair o ...

(1908–2009), who gave the term wide circulation, wrote, "If one wants to establish a parallel between

structural linguistics Structural linguistics, or structuralism, in linguistics, denotes schools or theories in which language is conceived as a self-contained, self-regulating semiotic system whose elements are defined by their relationship to other elements within th ...

and the structural analysis of myths, the correspondence is established, not between mytheme and word but between mytheme and

phoneme A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...

." Lévi-Strauss, ''La poetière jalouse'', Paris, 1985 (''The Jealous Potter'', Chicago, 1988) pp. 144-46. The structuralist analyzer of folk tales, Vladimir Propp, treated the individual tale as the unit of analysis. The unitary mytheme, by contrast, is the equivalent in myth of the

morpheme A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...

s, and sememes into which

divides language, the smallest possible units of sound, structure, and meaning (respectively) within a language

system A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its open system (systems theory), environment, is described by its boundaries, str ...

. In the 1950s, Claude Lévi-Strauss first adapted this technique of language analysis to analytic myth criticism. In his work on the myth systems of primitive tribes, working from the analogy of language structure, he adopted the French term ''mythème'', with the assertion that the system of meaning within mythic utterances parallels closely that of a language system.

Roman Jakobson Roman Osipovich Jakobson (, ; 18 July 1982) was a Russian linguist and literary theorist. A pioneer of structural linguistics, Jakobson was one of the most celebrated and influential linguists of the twentieth century. With Nikolai Trubetzk ...

varies this idea, treating mythemes as

concept A concept is an abstract idea that serves as a foundation for more concrete principles, thoughts, and beliefs. Concepts play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied within such disciplines as linguistics, ...

s or phonemes which have no significance in themselves but whose significance might be shown by

sociological Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociology was coined in ...

analysis. Philosophers such as

Daniel Dennett Daniel Clement Dennett III (March 28, 1942 – April 19, 2024) was an American philosopher and cognitive scientist. His research centered on the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of biology, particularly as those ...

have also used the term "mytheme". Lev Manovich uses the terms ''seme'' and ''mytheme'' in his book ''The Language of New Media'' to describe aspects of culture with which computer images enter into dialogue.

Citations

General and cited references

* {{cite book , first = Claude , last = Lévi-Strauss , authorlink = Claude Lévi-Strauss , chapter = La Structure des mythes , title = Anthropologie Structurale , url = https://archive.org/details/anthropologiestr00levi , location = Paris , publisher = Plon , language = French , year = 1958 , pages
227–255
, oclc = 753269 Comparative mythology *

Overview

See also

Citations

General and cited references