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Bible). Lévi-Strauss argued that there is no “true” or “original” version of any myth. Each version of a given myth is equally valid because each embodies the attempt of all structures to make sense out of an otherwise chaotic world. When examined from a structuralist perspective, he found that the enormous number of myths from various cultures reduces itself to a rather limited num‑ ber of what he called mythemes, the fundamental units of myths. A mytheme is analogous to a sentence in that it represents a relationship between two or more concepts, often in the form of a subject-verb relationship. A hero killing a monster is an example of a mytheme, as is a hero violating a moral law. LéviStrauss defines mythemes as “bundles” of relations because a mytheme consists of all its variants. For example, the mytheme “the hero kills a monster” includes a variety of different kinds of heroes (rich, poor, orphaned, of good family) kill‑ ing different kinds of monsters (male, female, half-human, sedentary, mobile, land-bound, seafaring, articulate, mute) for different reasons (to win a wife, to save a community, to prove himself). The point is that a structural approach to myth shows us that there is a relatively limited, knowable langue (underlying structure) by means of which we can order and understand the otherwise over‑ whelming number of different myths produced all over the world. Of course, myths are forms of narrative, and mythemes are therefore narrative structures. So the structural analysis of myths has obvious implications for the structural study of literature. Indeed, as we’ll see later in this chapter, in the section entitled “The Structure of Literary Genres,” some literary critics believe that all literature consists of the retelling, in various guises, of the same myths. Semiotics
Just as structural anthropology applies structuralist insights to the comparative study of human cultures, semiotics applies structuralist insights to the study of what it calls sign systems. A sign system is a linguistic or nonlinguistic object or behavior (or collection of objects or behaviors) that can be analyzed as if it were a specialized language. In other words, semiotics examines the ways linguistic and nonlinguistic objects and behaviors operate symbolically to “tell” us something. In terms of literary analysis, semiotics is interested in literary conventions: the rules, literary devices, and formal elements that constitute literary structures. We’ll examine this topic at some length in the following section, “Structuralism and Literature.” So let’s concentrate here on the nonlinguistic uses of semiotics, which I think you’ll find rather interesting. For example, the picture of the reclining blond beauty in the skin-tight, black velvet dress on the billboard advertising a particular brand of whiskey, when examined semiotically, “tells” us that those who drink this whiskey (presumably
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