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the canonic formula of myth and nonmyth
Author(s) -
MOSKO MARK S.
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1991.18.1.02a00060
Subject(s) - mythology , sociocultural evolution , sociology , epistemology , politics , ethnography , reinterpretation , anthropology , philosophy , aesthetics , theology , law , political science
Lévi‐Strauss's canonic formula for the structure of myth, f x (a): f y (b) ≅ f x (b): f a ‐1(y), was boldly intended to bring a “kind of order to what was previously chaos” (1963a [1955]:202, 228). Rarely, however, has Lévi‐Strauss or have others systematically examined the formula's suitability for interpreting authentic mythic texts or—more puzzling, perhaps, given myth's centrality—seriously considered the potentially homologous structuring of nonmythical ethnographic data. In this article I attempt a detailed reinterpretation of the canonic formula and, after appropriately modifying it for the analysis of nonmythical materials, illustrate its empirical suitability with respect to diverse sociocultural contexts of North Mekeo (Papua New Guinea) tradition: notions and practices regarding the human body (eating, excretion, health, illness, sexuality, reproduction), space and time, social classification, political organization, and, finally, myth. By means of these controlled comparisons of nonmyth and myth internal to a single sociocultural system, I show that the revised canonic formula increases the empirical and methodological precision of Lévi‐Straussian structural analyses. The structure of myth, therefore, is not restricted to myths. [ dualism (recursion/inversion), myth, social classification, structural analysis, ethnographic method, Melanesia ]