The Definition of Myth

Pierre-Yves Jacopin, former Professor of Social Anthropology, Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris

For centuries the word myth has given rise, in the Western tradition, to an enormous amount of literature; it is truly difficult to find a point of view likely to encompass most of the texts concerned by the term “myth”. It is a word that cannot be a single concept because it is totally context-dependent. Most analysts use it more as an idea or a field of understanding rather than as a framed notion. However, a first general distinction can be drawn between myth as a philosophical subject and myth as an ethnological or anthropological field. The problem which has been noticed since Europeans traveled to meet exotic people is that one finds “myths” everywhere that people form communities. In the Western world, following a tradition which begins with Herodotus, the studies on myth and mythology are rooted in the long-lived study of ancient Greek myths and, later on, of the Bible. Since then people have written down and collected myths, although, most often, without knowing what to do with them. They see “myths” in narratives that they endow with an epic turn. This feature is so strong that Lévi-Strauss, in his article on “The Structural Study of Myth”, cunningly defines myth as follows: “Whatever our ignorance of the language and the culture of the people where it originated, a myth is still felt as a myth by any reader anywhere in the world” (Lévi-Strauss,1963: 210, first published in 1955). With such a degree of certitude, a consensual definition of myth might very well be lacking forever. Yet this example also shows how much we actually need a practical definition of myth. Not an easy task, since even the authors of Notes & Queries (Royal Institute of Anthropology of Great Britain and Ireland, 6^th Edition) haven’t ventured to undertake it.  As Lévi-Strauss’ swerve implies, the difficulty comes from the fact that we cannot link the intuitive notion of myth to a universal concept or a more general practice.

Here is the definition of myth by Adolphus Peter (aka “A.P.”) Elkin, who spent more than eleven years among Australian Aborigines: “Myths narrate the sacred history of the acts of supernatural beings and tell how the physical and social universe came to existence through the deeds of the supernatural. In this way myths become the exemplary models for all significant human activities. By knowing myths, one knows the origin of things and hence can control and manipulate them at will. In most cases it is not enough to know the origin of myth, but it must be recited and ceremonially recounted. It has been said that by reciting myths one re-creates primordial times and emerges from the profane time to enter the “sacred” time of original events.” (Elkin 1964: 214-215, 220-222).

In fact since 1964, not much progress has been made on this subject (see for example Hiatt 1975: 1-23). In a conversation published in 1972 in Psychology Today (May 1972), Lévi-Strauss said that “a myth is a narrated story, but from the moment that it is perceived as a myth, it is a story without an author. The audience listening to the telling of the myth is receiving a message that, properly speaking, comes from nowhere. This is why the myth will be said to have a supernatural origin.” Though this remark is too loose to be considered a definition of myth, it reveals nevertheless a fundamental difference between Elkin’s concrete description and Lévi- Strauss’ abstract comment. They don’t use the word myth in the same way: Elkin refers to myths in the plural, while Lévi-Strauss uses the singular. Like many points of language, this difference, far from being trifling, is essential: it results from a difference of worldview between the Anglo-Saxon tradition and the so-called continental approach in philosophy and science. The former is based upon the empiricist approaches of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, while the latter follows the rationalist line of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant. In mythological studies the former are more matter-of-fact, while the latter are more abstract and intellectual. The singular/plural myth/myths distinction is not significant or determinant in itself. It just signals the difference of approach and comprehension between the concrete and ethnographic views on specific myths vs. the abstract and disembodied arguments about myth in general. In this perspective, the latter is considered as a genre (sometimes called oral literature, and therefore comparable to written literature). Yet some renowned specialists such as Paul Radin, Mircea Eliade, or Joseph Campbell, use plural and singular in speaking about myth(s), depending on the point of view that they adopt (see Doty 1986).

Beside Lévi-Strauss, other authors attempt to approach myths as a kind of rationalist discourse. An example is the notice of myth in the French “Dictionary of ethnology and anthropology” (Bonte & Izard 1991). Its title is “Myth”, the subtitle “Nature of the myth”; in the notice the author (Patrice Bidou) examines temporal aspects of myth, such as “the time of myth”, that is “the general history” of the people who retell it (idem 1991: 498); then he goes on to discuss metaphorical aspects, comparing myth to a landscape worked on by the weather, and ending with an allusion to Antonin Artaud’s Tarahumaras idea of truth (idem: 499). Eventually the author attempts to describe the procedure of the structural analysis of myth — considered as a discourse — in a metaphorical and abstract style, of which the intricacies come less from the methodology than from the uncertainty of the views of the author. A good example of Lévi-Strauss’ structural method is his analysis of the Bororo Bird’s Nester Myth, the one that opens the four volumes of his “Mythologiques”. He starts by dismantling the story into a series of abstract coded oppositions (women/men, difference/identity, etc.), showing that they resemble coded oppositions in neighboring societies’ myths (Maranda 1972, chap.13: 250-298). Thus the goal of the method is to show that myths of South and North America have similarities and are, somehow, transformations of each other. Another example, though in an another perspective, is his analysis of the Story of Asdiwal (Dundes 1984: 295-314). Finally, one should mentioned Lévi-Strauss’ “canonic formula”: Fx(a):Fy(b)~= Fx(b):Fa-1(y), in which Fx(a) represents an act or an action realized by an actor/author (a). The goal of the formula is to simulate a series of mythical transformations. The formula, introduced from the beginning of the structural study of myth (Lévi-Strauss 1963:228), has remained rather obscure until now; see the excellent book by Scubla 1998 on the subject. Even though Lévi-Strauss doesn’t say so, he used the formula until his last works (personal communication).

As long as empiricists are not simple-minded or arrogant (e.g. Kaplan & Manners 1972:186, 192 ff.; or Hill:1-17 and T. Turner: 233-281 in Hill 1988; see also Jacopin 1987), they face the same problems as rationalists (see E.R. Leach and S.F. Nadel in Firth ed. 1957:119-137, 189-208). They try, however, to resolve problems practically and on a local level. They all get inspiration from Malinowski’s functionalist approach (based in turn on Durkheim’s sociology, 2008). Malinowski’s approach is summed up in a now-famous quote: “Studied alive, myth, as we shall see, is not symbolic, but a direct expression of its subject matter; it is not an explanation in satisfaction of scientific interest, but a narrative resurrection of primeval reality, told in satisfaction of deep religious wants, moral cravings, social submissions, even practical requirements. Myth fulfills in primitive culture an indispensable function: it expresses, enhances, and codifies belief; it safeguards and enforces morality; it vouches for the efficiency of ritual and contains practical rules for the guidance of man. Myth is thus a vital ingredient of human civilization; it is not an idle tale, but a hardworking active force; it is not an intellectual explanation or an artistic imagery, but a pragmatic charter of primitive faith and moral wisdom” (Malinowski 1954 (1926):101). Though Malinowski uses here the singular to speak about myths in general, he doesn’t refer to some mythical discourse but to an open list of functions. This is why he is opposed to what he calls the “symbolic” understanding of myths or, to say it another way, its abstract aspects. Even if the rationalist and the empiricist procedures might look symmetrical (however opposed), they are radically different because ultimately the functionalist procedure implies an obligation to return to the field, relaunching observation and an analytic process. The functionalist approach in the study of agricultural rites is well illustrated with the volumes of Coral Gardens and their Magic, which still stands as Malinowski’ magnum opus (see the article “Coral Gardens and their Magic” in Wikipedia, also R. Firth in Firth 1957:93-118).

In the Western tradition, myth (or myths) are subjects of philosophical discussion and paradoxes (e. g. Burkert 1982, Kirk 1970: 8-31). In reality, Western ideas about myths are entirely ethnocentric. Not long ago, Sciences humaines, the popular French magazine on social sciences, published a special issue on “The Great Myths”, which mentions almost uniquely myths from the Greek and the Biblical tradition. Myths are not viewed from an ethnological point of view, but they are considered as “Myth”, that is as a kind of abstract and idealistic discourse. Thus from an anthropological point of view, Plato is not only the initiator of “philosophy”, but one of those who realize the transition from oral modes of thought to written expression. For writing introduces a specific way of thinking and acting that, in general, Western philosophers are ignorant of. Because they read, write, and work mainly on written texts, philosophers think (and perhaps act) as if written descriptions were real; forgetting that writing introduces an overhang from which to view the world remotely, a kind of perspective that obliterates the immediate perception of reality (Plato: Phaedrus 275c-e). This explains the diffidence of Socrates toward writing: for him written discourse is only an enactment of true speech, a “reminiscence” instead of a “true memory” (Plato: Phaedrus: 275b-276a). Since his time, it is common to refer to these two modes of expression as mūthos (mythic discourse) and logos (rationalist discourse).

Actually, Ancient Greek mūthos doesn’t have much to do with the mythical speech of myths in small-scale societies. Plato brings out Socrates’ distinction essentially to explain the boundary between oral expression and a written mode of thought. But at this time, the opposition is still not very clear, and in various instances, Plato uses mūthos when the context demands logos, and vice versa (Brisson 1998, Calame 2004: 16). In our modern understanding Plato’s logos refers to reason and consequently to truth, or rather to certainty. But, as Brisson notes, much more functional and probably helpful is the distinction between logos and lexis: logos is “what is expressed in the discourse” (in reference to Plato’s problematic of “object copy” vs. “object model”) while lexis is “the way of expressing the content of the discourse,” in reference to the relation between “the poet” whose “object” he is only making “a copy” of (Brisson 1998:69). This distinction poses the problem of the expression of thinking, which is at the root of modern Western philosophy (see below). Eventually, at the end of the Phaedrus dialogue, Plato plants his conception in Socrates’ words, when he concludes ,in an unexpected final comment — unexpected in view of the preceding discussions –, that the truth of oral language should and will henceforth inhabit written language (Phaedrus 278c-279c). Because of that, most Western thinkers are persuaded that during an infinity of time, myths had the exclusivity of truth and that Plato, in his dialogues, scored a coup by inventing philosophical thinking and toppling what he calls mūthos (mythical speech), thus giving the exclusivity of truth to logos (rational discourse). However, such a reversal of Socrates’ conviction looks like a sleight of hand: in ancient Greek, the word for truth is alētheia, yet Socrates doesn’t use it, although he commented on and valued the idea at length before (Phaedrus 247, 248, 249; Nicholson 1999: 178). The pre-Socratic meaning of alētheia is literally “what cannot be forgotten”, a term that fits perfectly with mythical truth in small-scale societies, namely, that myths and all mythic episodes or statements are true by definition, against all evidence, whatever that might be (see more below). This is probably why in his dialogue with Phaedrus, Socrates doesn’t use the Greek term alētheia, because Plato’s real intention is precisely to separate and to distinguish forever the philosophical search for the truth (figured in the famous allegory of the cave, Republic 514-520) from the spoken truth of myth.

In other words, Plato’s revolution, in which Western philosophers see their origins, is in fact the result of a long historical process, admirably recounted from an anthropological point of view by Marcel Detienne (see Detienne 1986:92-122, but also in 1994, 1996, 2002, 2008). Western thinkers never stop considering that a myth is something to be “debunked”: a widespread, popular belief that is in fact false. In Archaic Greece the memorable/unforgettable was transmitted orally through poetry, which is just one embodiment of myth. Starting with the beginning of the seventh century BCE, two types of discourse emerged that were set in opposition to poetry: history (as shaped by Herodotus and Thucydides) and philosophy (as shaped by the “peri phuseos” tradition of the fifth and sixth century B.C.E.)” (Partenia 2014).

Now in opposition with logos (and incidentally with mūthos), the idea of mythical truth in small-scale societies refers not only to some segmented parts or propositions (in the logical sense of the term), but above all to the narrative as a whole. Such a truth is not abstract or metaphysical: it refers to concrete situations and personal matters (Ong 1982:49); in Kantian terms, it would be considered as opinion rather than knowledge. For example, Yukuna people think that the Sun and the Moon are two ships turning around the earth, in such a way that when the Sun moves in the daylight, the Moon is on the dark side of the world. However, as we all can observe, it happens now and then that the Sun and the Moon are both at the same time in the sky; yet in spite of this fact, Yukuna people don’t doubt or question their myth, for myths cannot be wrong: they are perhaps only a little disturbed; in a way myths are truer or more real than reality. When I showed Yukuna photographs of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon, half of the people didn’t believe it, saying that white people were lying as always; the other half declared that it was time to give up on mythical knowledge (“yuku i’imakana”), and to adopt white stories. In other words, Yukuna myths are not debatable in themselves: they are organized in closed systems (Jacopin 1988, Koyré 1957): you take them or you leave them! This dogmatic view is a reason for some sociologists, like Mauss, to consider that myths foster the separation between sacred and profane (see Colleyn 1976: 21).

This discussion is the key to understand myths in non-Western societies. It raises two questions that nobody yet asks: why do we find myths, or similar narratives, in most societies, above all in all societies without writing? and second: why do myths remain obscure to the very people who perform them? Let’s start by saying that investigators and experts don’t stress enough the language aspects of myths. In the case of structuralism, it is not clear how meaning can emerge from a “structure” (as if mythology could mimic phonology). In the case of functionalism, Malinowski understands that language is not only about representation, as many social scientists still think, but indeed that words “do things” (as Austin will put it later). Malinowski’s reflections lead him to the discovery of the ‘phatic’ property of language (Malinowski 1923). Nevertheless these questions escape specialists because they all adopt a Platonic attitude: they start by recording mythical stories, then they write them down to interpret them. But in so doing, they transform them irrevocably into ethnocentric discourses, that is, into written texts, losing at the same time all contextual information, and transforming their search for sense into free speculations. Comparing (apparently) similar myths from neighboring societies, as Lévi-Strauss proposes, doesn’t help either; quite the opposite, it complicates and obscures the quest for signification, for if myths are “alive” (as Malinowski said above), it isn’t in dismantling them like dead animals, that one makes them more understandable. Contrary to popular belief, myths in small-scale societies are not characterized by representations, by “the story” as Lévi-Strauss pretends (Lévi-Strauss 1963:210), but by their narrative form in relation to their social functions (see below).

It should be clear by now that the Western ways of understanding myth in the Western tradition don’t help us to understand myths in small-scale societies. Comparing them practically is enough to realize the difference: Myth (singular) refers to text, while myths (plural) are spoken. Once they are written, mythical discourses never stop being textual, while spoken myths, because they are oral, are directly observable, including with their context. For myths are speech acts: telling a myth is a performance because it changes the concrete relationship between the teller, the listeners, and the rest (however absent) of their community; it is a concrete manifestation of their common identity.

Furthermore, the form of myths doesn’t have anything to do with the subject matter of the narrative; in a language community all myths look alike. Actually the content of myth is independent on its form: one can build a myth out of absolutely any material; in a way, the social function of mythical speech is more important than its content, in particular because the audience has heard it so often that it knows it by heart. Besides, listeners are also often speakers of myths. Only children who hear a myth for the first time will really learn something. This answers the first question above: why do we find myths, in most societies, and in all societies without writing? Because any community needs a set of collective verbal references in order to communicate. In societies without writing and lacking in written world-view, myths provide a common vision of the living world (examples in Green 1993, Sarkosh Curtis 1993, Mc Call 1990, etc.). One finds myths in all kinds of societies, whether state or stateless, very large or quite small. For instance, Morapitya is a small Buddhist village in the mountainous center of Sri Lanka; it is known because of the myth of Dutthagamani, who at the time, made peace among the Tamils before conquering the whole island and the kingdom (see Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa, chap. XV). An important variant of the myth says that Dutthagamani spent his youth in Morapitiya. Local people call his house “The house of enough paddy”, according to the Morapitiyan variant of the myth, while the rest of the people in Sri Lanka call it “The house of Dutthagamani” (Robinson 1975:15-20, 268-220, 282-288). Regarding their positions in the social system, audiences make different sense of the same myth. Dutthagamani has even been considered in Sri Lanka as a historical hero in school books. Another example is Witoto mythology collected by Konrad Preuss in the Colombian Amazon and recorded on rolls of wax that were published in 1921-1923. In 1969, when the ethnologist Jürg Gasché communicated their myths to the descendants of the people that Preuss had recorded, they declared pejoratively that these stories were only “words of old women” (personal communication).

The fixity of myths, though allowing changes and improvisations, has the function of writing in creating community. In modern societies myths are less significant, although they may be part of semi-literate peoples’ life; they may be eventually complemented or replaced by TV and advertisements. In other words, as in every performance art, people perform myths and rituals to portray themselves for themselves. Against all expectations, myths are more like musical instruments or paintings than objective representations: they are more expressive than objective; they are essentially meant to express shared realities (see Malinowski above). Narratives follow formally the properties of speech, that is, immediate linearity (one cannot pronounce two words or sentences at the same time). Because they are speech acts, myths are quite different from everyday discourse. To make easier their commitment to memory, the formal pattern of myths consists in recounting the adventures of one or of a group of heroes engaged in epic events belonging to the mythical past; they are often sung or accompanied with music. The order of the episodes is crucial; it guarantees the correct format and the very truth of the performance. For instance, Yukuna people consider that a narrative similar to a myth, but which doesn’t respect the order of the episodes, is no longer the “real” myth. What makes myths really precious for the people is their causality. Whatever or how they are defined, episodes draw a chain of natural causality: any episode is considered as the cause of the following one, and reciprocally, it is also the consequence of the preceding one. Yet the Yukuna say also that, in reverse, the last episode of a sequence, is also the cause of the preceding ones, because being their result, it determines them (teleologically). In other words, in the Yukuna mythic view of the world, chance or uncertainty doesn’t exist. Myths reduce events to a linear and causal expression. Therefore communities often need more than one narrative to render and explain social activities or phenomena such as war, sexual difference, food gathering, etc. This feature is a response to the second question above: why can episodes or mythical facts become obscure to the people who tell them? It is because they are genuinely holistic: myths don’t represent facts or things objectively, they only recall them in regard to the effective telling of the story as a whole (“as a living being”, Phaedrus 264c). In other words separate elements or episodes make sense only in regard to their proper place in performed myths; thus mythical objects or fragments of speech are imaginary: they are only fragments of mythical speech, and therefore they are neither true nor false. Yet the idea that myths cannot be untrue is, paradoxically, the reason why they must be taken seriously, whatever they may say. Before any other kind of bonds or relationships, mythical language is the basis of community.

The conclusions that myths in small-scale societies should be considered as speech acts, i.e. as performance-in-context — a fact, already noted by Malinowski doing fieldwork in 1916-1917–, implies that myths should be seen as living processes rather than closed discourse and texts. The former, that is myths, include the crude context, while the latter work out a predefined idea of “myth” that abstracts the actual myth from its social context. This doesn’t mean that the latter approach is uninteresting, but rather, that it neglects the dialectic between analysis and fieldwork, losing the ability to verify and eventually to change interpretation. The essential need is to adopt a point of view that allows direct observation. Mythical speech should be considered and analyzed as a social activity depending on the whole society. Therefore it should be approached as a system, not as paragraphs or sentences in isolation, cut off from their context; a proposal generally rejected by empiricists, who find it hard to believe in contextual data that isnot easily perceptible (for example, see Kaplan & Manners 1972: 121 ff.). In other respects, one finds countless interpretations based upon construed elaborations founded on imaginary or out of context information, sometimes even fueled by the pretense that they are unconscious.

Clearly, rituals must also be considered as performances in context. The empirical question, how is it possible to know the nature of the relationship between myths and rituals, has given rise to much debate and discussion. Is it a relationship of one myth to one ritual? Then what does it mean if one finds more myths than rituals? Are the meanings of myths related to the meanings of rituals? Etc. Actually one should be ready to consider all kinds of cases. For example, Yukuna people hold the festival of Kawarimi, which is also the name of the hero of the myth of their day-to-day routine. However, their relationship is not obvious: the name of Kawarimi is mentioned only one time during the two-day ritual by the people in charge of each of the two groups of ritual partners. The goal of the ritual is to invite most forest animals to dance and to offer them some chicha (the ritual beer). Every participant knows the concrete relationship between the myth and the rite. In the introduction to Political Systems of Highland Burma, Leach contends that:

“Myth, in my terminology, is the counterpart of ritual; myth implies ritual, ritual implies myth, they are one and the same. This position is slightly different from the textbook theories of Jane Harrison, Durkheim, and Malinowski himself. The classical doctrine in English social anthropology is that myth and ritual are conceptually separate entities which perpetuate one another through functional interdependence –- the rite is a dramatization of the myth, the myth is a sanction or the charter for the rite. This approach to the material makes it possible to discuss myths in isolation as constituting a system of belief, and indeed a very large part of the anthropological literature on religion concerns itself wholly with the discussion of the content of belief and of the rationality or otherwise of that content. Most such arguments seem to me to be scholastic nonsense. As I see it, myth regarded as a statement in words ‘says’ the same thing as ritual regarded as a statement in action. To ask questions about the content of beliefs which are not contained in the content of ritual is nonsense.” (Leach 1964 (1954):13-14).

In another words, treated as language manifestations, myth and ritual “are one and the same”. They correspond to each other because they belong to the life of the same community. So much so that as one speaks of mythical speech, one could and should speak of ritual speech, in order to avoid abstract discussions and the “scholastic nonsense” of which Leach is speaking.

The procedure to make sense of myths or of narratives is mainly based upon the hypothesis that brain processes are time-oriented. More precisely, the mind is less a matter of abstract thinking than of concrete speaking. Since speaking is linear, the order of expressions becomes a basic property. Emphasis is placed on language rather than on representation, information, content, or subjects or objects. Hence the double aspect of myths and narratives: on one hand, they are social productions embedded and participating in the social system, and on the other hand, they are products of language. Their social aspects are considered external, while their linguistic aspects are internal. Thus the first step to make sense of a myth in a small-scale society is to distinguish between its internal and its external aspects. The external or social function of myths creates a set of living relationships among its users. It cannot be approached in itself; for example, the identity of the myth-teller and of the listeners are important, as well as the location, the time, and the circumstances of the performance. So when ethnographers record only a myth told on tapes (before writing it down in order to treat it as discourse), they may collect a “myth”, but they lose its contextual significations. This is the reason why many empiricists don’t like to work on symbolic material, for when they take symbols out of context, they become difficult to comprehend and to evaluate with certainty.

From the internal point of view, one should consider three inter-related and corresponding subsystems (see Jacopin 2010): the story in itself considered as a whole (coherence principle); the succession of the episodes (metonymical principle) ; and the correspondence between mythical words and language, and their corresponding objects in reality (metaphorical principle). These three subsystems are related to each other; they form one system — myth:

1) The coherence principle. Its function is to collect the various parts belonging to the same story. Sorting among interpretations, it has the role of semantic guidance, pointing out which is the most likely among possible interpretations.

2) The metonymical or synecdochic principle (cf. Jakobson & Halle 1956, second part). This aspect follows the dynamic of speech. It induces awareness of the sequence of causality: expressions uttered first are perceived as the cause of those that follow. This causal ordering, implicit in every episode, facilitates at the same time the progression of the story and of the meaning of the myth.

3) The metaphorical principle or principle of elementary realism. Ideally, any mythical word or expression could be considered as a metaphor of some element in the reality. In the reverse order, any element of reality may occupy not just one position, but several different positions in the narration, all endowed with different meanings. For instance, in a Yukuna myth, Agouti (Dasyprocta Agouti), may take an active role in one episode — like a human, it speaks and interacts with the mythic hero (Jacopin 2010:§6, lines 4 ff.) –, while later on, it is only game to hunt. Moreover, mythical heroes, who consistently animate the narrative, have no counterpart in reality: their only function is to keep the story moving. In brief, myths don’t represent reality. They only evoke it in an interaction between mythical performances and personal experience.

Once the question of the definition of myth is resolved, emphasis can be put on the narrative form, rather than on mythical “contents”. The number of stories is so infinite that to classify them seems impossible. Besides, each of them has multiple meanings depending on the teller, the listeners, and the situation. Recreating community out of evolving complexities is precisely the function of myths. Thus from Ancient Greece to nowadays, despite Plato’s programmatic understanding of philosophical discourse, thinkers have taken advantage of the ambiguities of myth to develop alternative ways of thinking and of describing the world (e. g. Franklin 1784, Schelling 1842, the Schlegel brothers, Cassirer 1953, 1965, etc.). As Paul Veyne puts it: philosophical “reason has not won; the problem of myth was forgotten rather than resolved” (Veyne 1988: 74). And so until today, myth remains the obscure face of philosophy (e. g. Radin: 303-324) .

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Koyré, Alexander, 1957. From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Leach, Edmund R., 1964 (1954). Political Systems of Highland Burma. Boston: Beacon Press

——1961. Rethinking Anthropology. London: The Athlone Press

——1976. Culture and Communication. The logic by which symbols are connected. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Leach, Edmund & D. Alan Aycock,1983. Structuralist Interpretations of Biblical Myth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Leach, Edmund R., ed., 1967. The Structural Study of Myth and Totemism. London: Tavistock Publications (A.S.A. Monograph n° 5)

Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 1963. Structural Anthropology. New-York: Basics Books

——1972. “The father of Structural Anthropology — A conversation with Claude Lévi-Strauss”. Interview in Psychology Today, May 1972

——1966. The Savage Mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press

——1964-1971. Mythologiques (4 vol.). Paris: Plon

——1969. The Raw and the Cook (translation of the first vol. of the Mythologiques). New-York: Harper and Row

Malinowski, Bronislaw, 1954 (1926). “Myth in Primitive Psychology.” In Magic, Science and Religion. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday

——1923. “Supplement I: The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Language.” In Ogden C.K. and I.A. Richard, pp.296-236

——1974. Coral Gardens and Their Magic: A Study of the Methods of Tilling the Soil and Agricultural Rites in theTrobriand Islands. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, also Allen & Unwin 1966

Maranda, Pierre, 1972. Mythology. Harmondsworth, Middlesex (England): Penguin Books

McCall, Henrietta, 1990. Mesopotamian Myths. London: British Museum Publications

Mezzadri, Bernard, 2004. “Le mythe, objet tabou? “ in Mythe et mythologie dans l‘Antiquité gréco–romaine, RevueEurope, N° 904-905, Août-Septembre 2004, p. 3-8 http://www.artelittera.com/lang/6830-mythe-et-mythologie-dans-l-antiquite-greco-romaine-chapitre-1.html

Nicholson, Graeme, 1999. Plato‘s Phaedrus: The Philosophy of Love. West Lafayette, Purdue University Press

Ogden C.K. & I.A. Richard, 1923. The Meaning of Meaning. A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought andof The Science of Symbolism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul

Ong, Walter J., 1982. Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the Word. London: Methuen

Partenia, Catalin, 2014. “Plato’s Myths”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosphy (Summer 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (Ed.). URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/plato-myths/ [plato.stanford.edu]>

Preuss, Konrad Theodor, 1914. Die Geistige Kultur der Naturvölker. Leipzig

——1921-1923. Religion und Mythologie der Uitoto (2 vol.). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Radin, Paul, 1971. The World of Man. New York: E.P. Dutton

Ricoeur, Paul, 1963. “Discussion avec Claude Lévi-Strauss. Réponses à quelques questions.” Esprit, novembre 1963: 628-633

Robinson, Marguerite S., 1975. Political Structure in a Changing Sinhalese Village. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 1967. Notes and Queries on Anthropology, Sixth Edition. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul

Saussure, Ferdinand de, 1975 (1916). Cours de linguistique générale (critical edition prepared by Tullio De Mauro). Paris: Payot

——1966 (1916). Course in General Linguistics. New York: McGraw-Hill (translation of 1975 (1916))

——2002. Écrits de linguistique générale. Paris: Gallimard

Sarkhosh Curtis, Vesta, 1993. Persian Myths. London: British Museum Publications

Scheid, John & Jesper Svenbro, 2014. La tortue et la lyre. Paris: CNRS Éditions

Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelmhidden, 2008 (1842). Historical–Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology. New York: SUNY Press

Scubla, Lucien, 1998. Lire Lévi–Strauss. Paris: Odile Jacob

Soyinka, Wole, 1976. Myth, Literature and the African World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Stocking, George W., 1983. Observers observed. Essays on Ethnographic Fieldwork. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press

Strenski, Ivan, 1992. Malinowski and the Work of Myth. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press

Vernant, Jean-Pierre, 1984. The Origins of Greek Thought. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press

——1990. Myth and Society in Ancient Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

——2006. Myth and Thought among the Greeks. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Vernant, Jean-Pierre & Marcel Detienne, 1991. Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society (European Philosophy and the Human Sciences). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press

Veyne, Paul, 1988. Did the Greek Believe in Their Myths? An Essay on Constitutive Imagination. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press

For a selected bibliography on myth, myths and mythology see Doty 1986.