In structuralism-influenced studies of

mythology Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narra ...

, 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—a minimal unit that is always found shared with other, related mythemes and reassembled in various ways ("bundled") or linked in more complicated relationships. For example, the myths of Greek Adonis and Egyptian

Osiris Osiris (, from Egyptian ''wsjr'', cop, ⲟⲩⲥⲓⲣⲉ , ; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎𐤓, romanized: ʾsr) is the god of fertility, agriculture, the afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and vegetation in ancient Egyptian religion. He wa ...

share several elements, leading some scholars to conclude that they share a source, i.e. images passed down in cultures or from one to another, being ascribed new interpretations of the action depicted, as well as new names in various readings of

icon An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Catholic churches. They are not simply artworks; "an icon is a sacred image used in religious devotion". The mos ...

Overview

Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss (, ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anthr ...

(1908–2009), who gave the term wide circulation, wrote, "If one wants to establish a parallel between

structural linguistics Structural linguistics, or structuralism, in linguistics, denotes schools or theories in which language is conceived as a self-contained, self-regulating semiotic system whose elements are defined by their relationship to other elements within t ...

and the structural analysis of myths, the correspondence is established, not between mytheme and word but between mytheme and

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

." Lévi-Strauss, ''La poetière jalouse'', Paris, 1985 (''The Jealous Potter'', Chicago, 1988) pp. 144-46. The structuralist analyzer of folk tales Vladimir Propp treated the individual tale as the unit of analysis. The unitary mytheme, by contrast, is the equivalent in myth of the

morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology. In English, morphemes are ...

s, and sememes into which

divides language, the smallest possible units of sound, structure, and meaning (respectively) within a language

system A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment, is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose and express ...

. In the 1950s, Claude Lévi-Strauss first adapted this technique of language analysis to analytic myth criticism. In his work on the myth systems of primitive tribes, working from the analogy of language structure, he adopted the French term ''mythème'', with the assertion that the system of meaning within mythic utterances parallels closely that of a language system. Roman Jakobson varies this idea, treating mythemes as

concept Concepts are defined as abstract ideas. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles, thoughts and beliefs. They play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied by ...

s or phonemes which have no significance in themselves but whose significance might be shown by sociological analysis. Philosophers such as Daniel Dennett have also used the term "mytheme".

Lev Manovich Lev Manovich ( ) is an author of books on digital culture and new media, and professor of Computer Science at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Manovich's current research and teaching focuses on digital humanities, social comput ...

uses the terms ''seme'' and ''mytheme'' in his book ''The Language of New Media'' to describe aspects of culture that computer images enter into dialog with.

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References

* {{cite book , first = Claude , last = Lévi-Strauss , authorlink = Claude Lévi-Strauss , chapter = La Structure des mythes , title = Anthropologie Structurale , url = https://archive.org/details/anthropologiestr00levi , location = Paris , publisher = Plon , language = French , year = 1958 , pages
227–255
, oclc = 753269 Comparative mythology *

Overview

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