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Thus, a structural approach towards myths is to address all of these constituents. Furthermore, a structural approach should account for all versions of a myth, as all versions are relevant to the function of the myth as a whole. This leads to what Lévi-Strauss calls a spiral growth of the myth that is continuous while the structure itself is not.
In structuralism-influenced studies of mythology, a mytheme is a fundamental generic unit of narrative structure (typically involving a relationship between a character, an event, and a theme) from which myths are thought to be constructed [1] [2] —a minimal unit that is always found shared with other, related mythemes [citation needed] and reassembled in various ways ("bundled") [3] or ...
There is considerable similarity between structural literary theory and Northrop Frye's archetypal criticism, which is also indebted to the anthropological study of myths. Some critics have also tried to apply the theory to individual works, but the effort to find unique structures in individual literary works runs counter to the structuralist ...
He developed a theory of signs to demonstrate this perceived deception. He suggested that the construction of myths results in two levels of signification: the "language-object", a first order linguistic system; and the "metalanguage", the second-order system transmitting the myth. [13]
This type of structural analysis of folklore is referred to as "syntagmatic". This focus on the events of a story and the order in which they occur is in contrast to another form of analysis, the "paradigmatic" which is more typical of Lévi-Strauss's structuralist theory of mythology. Lévi-Strauss sought to uncover a narrative's underlying ...
Religion and mythology differ, but have overlapping aspects. Many English speakers understand the terms "myth" and "mythology" to mean fictitious or imaginary . However, according to many dictionary definitions, these terms can also mean a traditional story or narrative that embodies the belief or beliefs of a group of people , and this ...
Jacques Lacan: Lacan went beyond the proposition that the unconscious is a structure that lies beneath the conscious world; the unconscious itself is structured, like a language. This would suggest parallels with Jung. Further, Lacan's Symbolic and Imaginary orders may be aligned with Jung's archetypal theory and personal unconscious respectively.
To an extent, all theories about mythology follow a comparative approach—as scholar of religion Robert Segal notes, "by definition, all theorists seek similarities among myths". [3] However, scholars of mythology can be roughly divided into particularists, who emphasize the differences between myths, and comparativists, who emphasize the ...