Claude Levi-Strauss (b. 1908)

LEVI-STRAUSS, Claude), structuralism anthropologist. Levi-Strauss was born in Brussels and studied at the University of Paris. From 1935-9 he was professor at the University of Sao Paulo making several expeditions to central Brazil - from where much of the material for his classic Tristes Tropiques was garnered. Tristes Tropiques is a classical journey of discovery, a quest for the past and for the realization of self... It is a work of anthropology, grandly speculative and …

…what Levi-Strauss calls "Mythemes". Structural analysis can account for any version of a particular myth. *To prove this point, Strauss goes into rather lengthy analysis of Oedipus myth, Zuni myth and analyzes a Pueblo myth with a similar structure. *He concludes that the structural method of myth analysis brings order out if chaos. *He wanted to make the study of myth logical and "scientific", and not to have to rely on any subjective interpretive factors.