Coherence and Incoherence of Mythic Structure: Its Symbolic Function

Extract

Those who study myth today consider with some predilection societies with no written language, such as are studied by ethnologists, wherein they hope to find myth of a more pure and more living nature than is to be found in civilizations where it has been treated in a “literary” form. To me, it does not appear at all obvious that the least elaborate should necessarily be the most pure and the most revealing. While, as they develop, societies may be invested with structures of an increasing complexity and which are superimposed to such an extent that their organizational plan sometimes seems confused, at the same time the social functions are diversified and each of them becomes more simple. Is it in a society where the same character is at one and the same time king, priest and chief warrior that the distinctive characteristics of political authority, sacerdotal office and military activity are the most clearly illustrated, or is this clearer in a society where the different responsibilities are dissociated—even if, in their effective execution, it appears that complex relationships connect this authority, this office and this activity one with the other? In the same way, are not societies where there is coexistence and confrontation between clearly distinct conceptual thought and mythic thought, each aware of its own specificity, those that allow us best to understand the essence of the myth in its greatest purity?