Claude Lévi-Strauss

Culture and myth

Lévi-Strauss believed that each retelling of a myth was a snapshot of the culture to which the myth belonged; that cultures embedded their most important beliefs into their mythology, and those values are transparently reflected.[cite:@colorado2007introducing] Further, Lévi-Strauss argued that different retellings of the same single myth show evolution of a culture's values over time.

The idea of mythology reflecting culture is the foundation of cultural analysis. Cultural analysis of a myth bases inferences about the culture's beliefs upon the myth.