Topics — What a work is about. Nucleation holds whatever reading the owner files here, whether or not an Anthology of the SOTA topic could also hold it; instruction for ML practice belongs to the anthology (ADR-048). The words are seeded from the clusters the reading-time triage of 2026-09-25 found, and grow by decision.
Myth and folklore — myths, folktales and their variants as objects of study — morphology of the folktale, structural and transformational analysis of myth, and the computational modelling of either (ADR-034).
6 of 2004 LIT documents. Back to the full index.
| # | Title | Summary | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| LIT-775 v3 | Structural Anthropology | Lévi-Strauss (1958; English 1963, Basic Books). Essays that carry the method of structural linguistics into anthropology: kinship, myth and social organisation analysed as systems of relations and oppositions, including “The Structural Study of Myth”. Not read: no lawful full text was found. | Unavailable — filed 2026-10-09 from catalogue records, not read: no lawful full text was found. The English edition is lending-only at the Internet Archive and search-only at HathiTrust. One Internet Archive scan of the 1958 Plon edition is openly downloadable under a not-in-copyright flag that HathiTrust’s review of the same scan contradicts, so it was not used. It stays Unavailable until a copy is supplied, not on merit. No NOTE is filed. |
| LIT-804 | Computational challenges to test and revitalize Claude Lévi-Strauss transformational methodology | Doja, Capocchi & Santucci (2021), Big Data & Society 8(2). Proposes DEVS modelling and simulation (in DEVSimPy) to generate Lévi-Strauss’s myth transformations and to map a myth’s mythemes onto a landscape, and a “neo-structural” extension of the canonical formula to identity politics. Implemented: myths as mytheme lists, variants generated by user-specified operations, and a Google Earth display of one Corsican folktale. A software demonstration; no structural hypothesis is tested. | Active — read 2026-10-09 (NOTE-609), in full, from the publisher’s PDF deposited in HAL; worth reading as a statement of a programme rather than a result: the authors propose discrete-event system specification (DEVS) modelling, in their Python environment DEVSimPy, to generate and visualise Lévi-Strauss’s transformations of myth, and to extend the canonical formula to identity politics. What the paper implements is modest: a myth is entered as a list of mythemes (term and function), a new variant is produced from a reference myth (Lévi-Strauss’s M1 Bororo) by transformation operations stored as an attribute of a model, i.e. specified by the user, and the variants are drawn as a graph; the “validation” plots the 20 mythemes of one Corsican folktale, U Lurcu, on Google Earth in narrative order. No hypothesis about how myths transform is tested. The transformation engine is summarised from the authors’ 2020 Symmetry paper, not presented here. |
| LIT-807 | A Discrete-Event Simulation of Claude Lévi-Strauss’ Structural Analysis of Myths Based on Symmetry and Double Twist Transformations | Santucci, Doja & Capocchi (2020), Symmetry 12(10):1706. Specifies the authors’ DEVS models (in DEVSimPy) for generating variants of a myth from a reference myth by Lévi-Strauss’s transformations, and a NetworkX graph of the variants produced. Every basic transformation is a user-specified substitution of one term for another across the mythemes; the canonical formula is described but its computation is not; validation is reproduction of 70 Mythologiques myths and 28 Corsican tales by transformations chosen to produce them. | Active — read 2026-10-09 (NOTE-632), in full, from the publisher’s version deposited in HAL; worth reading as the place where the authors’ “transformation model” of Lévi-Strauss is actually specified, and for what that specification turns out to be. A myth is a list of mythemes, each a pair (term a, function x); homology, inversion, opposition and symmetry are all one operation, replacing a term by another term in every mytheme, the inverse, opposite or “symmetric” term being supplied by the user; adding and removing a mytheme complete the set. The canonical formula is explained by Lévi-Strauss’s Jealous Potter example and listed as selectable, but no rule for computing it on a mytheme list is given. The “validation” generates 70 myths of the Mythologiques and 28 Corsican folktales by choosing, each time, the transformations that produce them, and reports them correct against Lévi-Strauss’s books and Corsican specialists, with no measure. It encodes an analyst’s transformations; it does not find or test them. |
| LIT-822 | Transformation transformed | Descola (2016), HAU 6(3):33–44. A keynote on structuralism as method: meaning lies in contrasts within a set of variants, and a structure is the set of invariant relations that orders transformations between them. Lévi-Strauss used transformation in two regimes, Goethean development of an initial form (kinship) and Thompsonian deformation between given forms (myth, where the analyst chooses the cuts). Descola’s fourfold ontology is a Goethean group; structural comparison is anthropology’s fairest symmetrization. | Active — read 2026-10-09 (NOTE-641), in full, from the PDF on the journal’s own site (haujournal.org); worth reading as a short statement, by Lévi-Strauss’s student, of what structural analysis is when separated from Lévi-Strauss’s philosophy: no phenomenon has meaning in itself, only in contrast with others of its kind, and a structure, unlike a system, is the set of invariant relations that lets one move from one variant to another by transformation. Descola distinguishes two regimes of transformation in Lévi-Strauss: a Goethean one, the development of an initial form into its possible variants (kinship in Les structures élémentaires, and Descola’s own four ontologies), and a Thompsonian one, continuous deformation between given forms (myth). In myth, he notes, the group of transformations is a virtual continuum on which the analyst makes the cuts, so the path between variants is the analyst’s choice. A keynote lecture; argued, not demonstrated. |
| LIT-828 | Морфология сказки | Propp (1928), Leningrad, Academia (Morphology of the Folktale, English 1958, 2nd ed. 1968). In a hundred Russian wondertales the constants are the characters’ functions, defined by their place in the action, not the characters or motifs: 31 functions, always in one order, distributed over seven spheres of action, so all wondertales are of one type and differ in what they omit, how functions are realised and who performs them. Classification by plot is impossible; the wondertale may be morphologically a myth. | Active — read 2026-10-09 (NOTE-615), in Russian, the preface and all nine chapters of the 1928 first edition from a library scan in full view at the Internet Archive; the appendices skimmed. Worth reading as the founding structural analysis of narrative: in the wondertales of Afanasyev’s collection (nos. 50–151), what stays constant is not the characters or motifs but the functions of the characters, actions defined by their consequence for the plot; there are only 31, they follow one order, and so all wondertales are of one type, differing in which functions they omit, how each is realised and who performs it. Functions fall to seven spheres of action (villain, donor, helper, princess and her father, dispatcher, hero, false hero). Propp holds that a tale can be generated from the scheme, that plot and variant cannot be told apart, and that wondertales in their morphological basis are myth. Source of THEORY-167. |
| LIT-830 v2 | Morphology of the Folktale | Propp (1958), Morphology of the Folktale, trans. Laurence Scott, ed. Svatava Pirkova-Jakobson, Indiana University Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore and Linguistics, Publication 10 (IJAL 24(4), pt. 3); 2nd ed., revised and edited by Louis A. Wagner, introduction by Alan Dundes, University of Texas Press, 1968. The English translation of Морфология сказки (1928), held as LIT-828 and read there in Russian. Skimmed in the 1968 edition (chs. II–III and Dundes’s introduction): the four theses and 31 functions match the Russian reading; the genre and character terms shift (“folktale”, “fairy tale”, “dramatis personae”); and Wagner’s notes correct Propp’s tale references and renumber the tales. | Active — skimmed 2026-10-09 (NOTE-642) in the 1968 edition: Dundes’s introduction and chs. II–III (pp. 19–65), from copies on University at Buffalo and MIT web pages; the 1958 edition was not seen. Worth reading as the text through which most readers outside Russia met Propp. Chs. II–III carry the four theses and all 31 functions with their definitions and signs, matching the record’s reading of the Russian (NOTE-615), but with Latin and Greek signs that differ from the Cyrillic. It names the class “fairy tales” under a title its own introducer calls misleading, and alternates “dramatis personae” with “characters”. Wagner’s 41 notes in those two chapters correct Propp’s tale citations and renumber the tales to the later Afanas’ev numbering. The seven roles (ch. VI) were not read. |