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myths to the French equivalents are kept to a minimum and are generally designed to be provocative, suggesting avenues for exploration at a later date. Indeed, by focusing purely on the Welsh Owein, the analysis is able to move beyond establishing the basic structure and explores how the material engages in a complex structural play.
This work is foundational, since, as far as I am aware, never before has a sustained attempt to analyse comprehensively the Mabinogion’s deep structure been undertaken. Several interesting and informative analyses of the narrative’s structural cohesion have been undertaken (Bollard 1996b; Gantz 1996; Reck 2003); however, as chapter 1 demonstrates, this endeavour is quite different from the one being undertaken here. A structuralist approach of the kind that is familiar to anthropologists is harder to find and is largely restricted to works that concentrate on only one of the myths of the Mabinogion (Crossley-Holland 1997) and mix structuralism with other techniques (L. Jones 1992). Of great interest are Lévi-Strauss’ several musings on the structure of Chrétien’s version of Percival (1977, 1985, 1987). Whilst dealing primarily with French and German variants of this myth, the analysis nevertheless hits on a central theme that is repeated in the Welsh material. Thus, this work is able to provide a detailed analysis which is in concordance with some of the intuitive insights Lévi-Strauss presents in his brief discussions of Celtic and European myths. Perhaps the most pertinent analysis of this material so far undertaken is Ford’s article-length study of one mytheme that occurs in four of the myths (1996b). However, even Ford himself has suggested that this brief article is not intended as a conclusive structuralist analysis and is instead intended to provoke others to undertake such a project: this work answers that call.
Another of the so-called Romances, Gereint, is the subject of the next chapter of analysis (chapter 5), where it is shown to operate in largely the same way as Owein, establishing a central rule and then playing with alternative systems which are eventually rejected. The third Romance examined is Peredur: here the focus of the analysis shifts from examining structural play and instead (once the central structure is