Welsh Mythology: A Neo-Structuralist Analysis By Jonathan Miles- ...

for Lévi-Strauss, a ‘cold’ culture is one which has no tradition of writing and is like a small clockwork device: it has systems in place which enable it to resist entropy,³⁷ whereas a ‘hot’ culture, in contrast, is said to be like a steam engine: it constructs a presentist myth,³⁸ which incorporates a linear sense of progression (Lévi-Strauss 1969, 33). This is undoubtedly what Lévi-Strauss had in mind when he said that the myths of the Americas act in such a way as to annul the effects of time (1994, 16; 1981, 606). They contain within them systems that act as shock absorbers for the changes brought about by historical analysis and allow for time to be focused on the present.³⁹

This theory, while in itself controversial, is quite different from the crude evolutionism often attributed to Lévi-Strauss.⁴⁰ Lévi-Strauss himself stated that the structuralist ‘should not draw a distinction between societies with no history and societies which have histories…[for] every human society has a history’ (1969, 39). Furthermore, the idea of ‘coldness’, of resistance to entropy, does not apply to the supposed state of a society’s myths but rather to the way that the myths function (Gow 2001, 27). Thus, Lévi-Strauss did not claim, as is often supposed, that the myths are somehow frozen and resistant to change; rather, they resist change by being dynamic and open to historical events. Indeed, as Gow has noted, based upon Lévi-Strauss’ writings, the last thing we would expect of myths is self-identical reproduction over time; ‘instead, we would expect them to be marked by extreme openness and liability’ (ibid.).

This analysis applies the structuralist technique to a culture that could be defined in Lévi-Strauss’ terms as ‘hot’,⁴¹ and yet the myths in question seem to have systems which at times act to obliterate Malinowskian unpleasant truths⁴² in much the same way that Lévi-Strauss suggested that the myths of a ‘cold’ society operate. However, the issue of how accurately the society in question may or may not fit with one of Lévi-Strauss’ ideal types is of far less interest than the way in which the myths I examine relate to the system of twins that Lévi-Strauss uncovered in the Americas. In his most recent writings, Lévi-Strauss suggested that this bipartite system is the key to understanding how the myths of the