Mythème

Etmology

Mythème, a term in French coined by Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908- ) on mythe (v. article MYTHE)+ suffixe -ème «the smallest analyzable element» derived from the linguistic term phonème, «smallest distinctive unit of articulated speech», from the Greek *ςοντμα, «sound of the voice», cf. morphème (1921) English lexeme (1940), monème (Martinet, 1941).

Definitions

Defined by [Claude Lévi-Strauss]] as the smallest, most succinct element of meaning in a myth, the mytheme grounds his structuralist approach to myth criticism.

Wikipedia

In the study of mythology, a mytheme is an irreducible nugget of myth, an unchanging element, not unlike a cultural meme, one that is always found shared with other, related mythemes and reassembled in various ways—"bundled" was Claude Lévi-Strauss's image— or linked in more complicated relationships, like a molecule in a compound. For example, the myths of Adonis and Osiris share several elements, leading some scholars to conclude that they share a source.

In the 1950s Claude Lévi-Strauss first adapted this technique of language analysis to analytic myth criticism. In his work on the myth systems of primitive tribes, working from the analogy of language structure, he adopted the term mythème, with the assertion that the system of meaning within mythic utterances parallels closely that of a language system. This idea is somewhat disputed by Roman Jakobson, who takes the mytheme to be a concept or phoneme which is without significance in itself but whose significance might be shown by sociological analysis.