| Chapter 1: | Myth and Theory |
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that may be either accepted or rejected; furthermore, the same narrative character can in different myths act in a different structural role (Hénaff 160). Many analysts of Y Mabinogi have assumed that all narrative characters are playing the same role in every myth; yet in reality, the narrative characters often express different structural combinations in different myths. This mistake is not dissimilar to the more common mistake of assuming all symbols act in the same way in different cultures.23 Yet here the distinction is more complex for, although the symbol is culturally specific, one narrative character is capable of symbolising two different things.24 Thus, the Riannon25 of Pwyll and the Riannon26 of Math bear little resemblance except in name: in action and relation they reveal themselves to be representative of two different underlying aspects.27
1.5. MYTH AND HISTORY
One of the most misunderstood areas of Lévi-Strauss’ thought is his theory of Amazonian myth acting to abolish time (1994, 16; 1981, 606). This statement tends to be conflated with his statements about cultures being divisible into ‘hot’ cultures, which internalise a linear sense of history and make it the moving power of their development, and ‘cold’ cultures, which have systems in place to annul the effects of a linear history (1977, 28–29). When taken together, these two statements form the backbone of the standard gloss of Lévi-Strauss’ position on history: there are some societies which, in contrast to our own, exist in a world of mythic time without history (Eriksen 2002, 80). However, as Professor Gow has recently pointed out, this is something of a misreading of Lévi-Strauss’ position which, far from being a historical, actually presents a treatise for an anthropological concept of history (2001, 10–14).
In order to understand how an argument about myth acting to abolish time can actually be an argument for the importance of viewing anthropological material historically, it is necessary to look at the broad scope of the Mythologiques range and the underlying objectives of this study. By systematically analysing one myth after another, moving through time and space, following mythic, historical, and geographical connections,