2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

F ROM LANGUAGE TO MYTH
ers, see as fascinating stories that people without writing tell each other, are actually what
those same people consider, most often, as dearest to their existence since they constitute
the core of their religious systems. The attempt to find a formally determinable structure
underlying mythological production, therefore, aims at discovering the basic structure of
those human societies. And, by induction and/or extrapolation, some basic elements of hu-
man culture in general.
In 1955, Claude Lévi-Strauss published the first in a long series of studies dedicated to
the study of religious beliefs—”The Structural Study Of Myth”—that exemplifies the basic
elements of his structural approach. This essay was published almost ten year before the
appearance of the first volume of Mythologiques, Lévi-Strauss massive four-volume work
devoted to the interpretation of myths. However, as it has been recognized by many an in-
terpreter, it can be taken to represent the theoretical and methodological foundation upon
which Lévi-Strauss was to build his understanding of mythology in the following twenty
years of his career. Lévi-Strauss himself may be said to recognize, implicitly, the corner-
stone position of “The Structural Study of Myth,” since he will refer continuously to it in
all the conceptual discussions contained in his later books. Indeed, even if Lévi-Strauss has
never been shy of self-quotation, a frequency analysis would probably show that no other
text of his is quoted more often. I will closely follow his exposition in order to underline
the basic features of the structure that, he claims, underlies every myth. 13
Lévi-Strauss starts from an antinomy commonly felt in the field at the time of his writ-
ing: the content of myths is both too arbitrary to support any unified explanation—myths
do not possess a common structure constraining their narration—and too repetitive, since
the mythographer encounters the same themes and characters all over again, although in
ever new forms and stories. This basic antinomy is the principal cause of the constant os-
13. Marcel Hénaff is one of the few commentators who disagree with this thesis; he contrasts a linguistic
(and game-based) phase of Structuralism that he sees developed around the thesis contained in the
mentioned essay to a music-based phase that will prevail after 1964, e.g. with Mythologiques. However,
I think he mistakes for a theoretical shift what is in fact to be considered an intrinsic development
allowing Lévi-Strauss to address some crucial philosophical issues left unattended to in the earlier essay,
as I will argue in the next chapter, sections 6 and 7. See Marcel Hénaff, Claude Lévi-Strauss (Paris:
Belfond, 1991) 172-192
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