ABSTRACT
For Claude Lévi-Strauss, myth is a logical instrument to think through certain contradictions of human experience. 1 Myth makes connections between its inventors and their mysterious world. The connections are not always obvious because myth builds bridges among apparently disconnected phenomena. Lévi-Strauss contrasts myth to history by pointing out that, while history is an open system of communication because it is always adding new information, myth is a closed system of communication because it is a static form with the same elements combined over and over again. 2 The structures discovered by Lévi-Strauss are maps of these elements. The maps recur in many different myths and provide ways to resolve contradictions presented by myths. The logic of these structures is innate to the closed system of the myths. Consequently, Lévi-Strauss says that myths think themselves. There is a logic inherent in myths. The contradictions of history are resolved within the closed limits of the story of the myth. Lévi-Strauss’ analysis of the Oedipus myth illustrates the nature of the closed system of myths. In subsequent chapters we will compare his approach to the myth with that of other French structuralists.
