Strenski/How to do things, 5. What Lévi-Strauss May or May Not Owe to Henri Hubert

Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism dominated the theory of myth in mid-20 th -century. His attempts to establish a Durkheimian provenance for structuralism has misled myth theorists about Durkheimian theory of myth. There, we find a halting theory of myths at once sociological, but also one granting myths a degree of autonomy of its social bases, but in any case, hardly structuralist. The true heirs of Hubert’s work on myth are Georges Dumézil, Maurice Leenhardt, and Marcel Granet. By contrast, the structural theory of myth boasts an exceptional originality.