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

to demonstrate the structure of a group of myths which are (somewhat artificially) limited in both the scope of time and place. Yet, at no point is it suggested, as indeed chapter 2 makes clear, that the boundaries set by this work are firm, actual boundaries; rather, they are boundaries which are imposed upon the work for necessary methodological reasons.³⁰ It is clear that the world of medieval Wales was part of wider networks of trade, governance, and (to some extent) folk movement;³¹ therefore, it may be hypothesised that a network of interconnected sets of myths may be traced in medieval Europe comparable to that which Lévi-Strauss finds in the Americas. Indeed, I believe that further analysis will demonstrate this to be the case; however, here the goal is to lay the first firm foundation of such a wider exploration and clearly explicate the structure of one limited area of that larger whole, which, apart from arbitrarily drawn closure, could theoretically extend from one connecting set to the next indefinitely.

Nevertheless, a further note is necessary on why this book, which for obvious reasons is not built upon the method of participant observation, covers myths from such a restricted region. This, in part, is a reaction against the way that these myths have often been treated in the past³² and, in part, a desire to inoculate the book against one of the most persistent criticisms of Lévi-Strauss’ structuralism: the suggestion that he hops around to such an extent that he is able to easily ‘cherry pick’ the sources that best explicate his preconceived hypothesis.³³ The accuracy of Lévi-Strauss’ interpretations of the material is beyond the scope of this project and is well covered elsewhere (Gow 2001; Hugh-Jones 1979). My concern here is to attempt to both avoid this criticism of my own work and demonstrate the ability of the structuralist approach to incorporate such a rebuke by restricting my field of enquiry to such a focused study that I cover a comprehensive range of the material available in the manuscript sources I have chosen.³⁴ Indeed, restriction of the area of study is an often-overlooked requirement of structuralism. Lévi-Strauss himself stressed that whilst ‘the more the field of analysis is broadened the more resemblances are uncovered…they have less and less meaning…In contrast a limited mythical field, regardless of the manner used to define it, overflows with meanings’ (1996, 188).