| Chapter 1: | Myth and Theory |
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abstract to the specific, increasing levels of divergence in the structural systems will be perceptible. At the highest level of structure, the specific category content can be seen to be very culturally (and temporally) specific, whilst still conforming broadly to the principles of more stable and widespread underlying structure.
1.9. A NEOSTRUCTURALIST METHOD FOR ANALYSIS
Armed with this new understanding of structuralism, it is now possible to outline the basic principles of the neostructuralist analysis that is applied to Welsh material in the following chapters. This analysis explores the organisational structures of the uchelwyr.51 It focuses primarily on myth, in particular that material which has consistently (if somewhat inaccurately) been labelled Mabinogion; however, the structures are not limited to the myths and relate, in an abstract and complex way, to other elements of society, such as art, ritual, kinship, and exchange systems. Due to the constraints of both the material and the study, these other elements do not form a central aspect of this exploration; however, what is known of these systems is referred to often, and, where relevant, the links between the structure of myth, kinship, ritual, and exchange systems are made evident. For neostructuralist analysis to function properly, the material must be firmly grounded in ethnographic data, and with this in mind, I have both put a compacted, idealised ethnography before the analysis and referred to ethnographic information throughout the analysis.
The analysis itself works from the top down, beginning with the surface or narrative level: it moves down to the level of category content, where the analysis dwells for a while, collecting data and determining how mythemes are utilised. This is important for, without sufficient data, it is not possible to accurately extrapolate overall trends, and what may seem of the utmost importance at first may be shown with time to be simply anomalous data. However, once the data is firmly established, abstraction to a deeper level of structure is undertaken, and it is the data uncovered at this level that provides a rich store of information for subsequent analysis.