| Chapter 1: | Myth and Theory |
|
|
behind the narrative data and, indeed, how the narrative data is best understood by the myth’s host culture.
It is therefore crucial for an understanding of Lévi-Strauss’ structural analysis (and the analysis I undertake of Welsh myth) that the difference between underlying structure and narrative is understood: this is equivalent to the difference between a computer game and the program which is used to run the computer game (Kunin 2004, 8), or the difference between speech and the grammatical laws which underlie that speech. It is further important to remember that Lévi-Strauss’ concept of structure was not unitary but complex. His analysis operated across three levels of structure, with each level becoming more fundamental and, hence, more abstract than the last. He claimed that his controversial base-level of structure is an expression of universal human cognitive biology, and by proving such, Lévi-Strauss was able to prove that men have always been thinking, in all times and in all places, equally well.22
1.4. STRUCTURAL PLAY AND REPETITION
At times in Lévi-Strauss’ work, it seems that the structure of a myth is not merely a symptom of a society’s social structure but actually a tool for the enculturisation of the neophyte (Leach 1986, 58). Myth is said not only to contain a message but also to seek to communicate that message. In order to communicate its message, myth employs repetitions of structure, phrasing things in slightly different ways; therefore, when the body of the myth is taken as a whole, the meaning becomes clear. Thus, it is not sufficient to look at merely one myth or merely one variant of a myth; instead, a corpus of a myth or all of a myth’s variants must be examined. Lévi-Strauss compared this kind of communication to someone who is holding a telephone conversation on a bad line (1983, 127), whereas Leach preferred the analogy of two people trying to shout to each other on a windy day (1986, 59). In both cases it is possible to imagine that, the first time a statement is made, only part of the statement will be audible and the message unclear. It is then suggested that the conveyor of the statement will not be content to merely repeat exactly the same