Some thoughts/questions about Levi-Strauss

Here is a quote from Claude Levi-Strauss's "Structural Anthropology":

"From Lang to Malinowski, through Durkheim, Lévy-Bruhl, and van der Leeuw, sociologists and anthropologists who were interested in the interrelations between myth and ritual have considered them as mutually redundant. Some of these thinkers see in each myth the ideological projection of a rite, the purpose of the myth being to provide a foundation for the rite. Others reverse the relationship and regard ritual as a kind of dramatised illustration of the myth. Regardless of whether the myth or the ritual is the original, they replicate each other; the myth exists on the conceptual level and the ritual on the level of action. In both cases, one assumes an orderly correspondence between the two, in other words, a homology. Curiously enough, this homology is demonstrable in only a small number of cases. It remains to be seen why all myths do not correspond to rites and vice versa, and most important, why there should be such a curious replication in the first place."

This is part of his project to structuralize the study of myth. I find it very interesting. He schematizes myth interpretation by deducing that, like language, myth is formed of units, that these units are more or less arbitrary, and that what gives them meaning are the way that they are put together. For example, he will break the Oedipus myth into small parts, arrange them in a grid (columns of themes, rows more or less chronologically) and see what he can find out. More on this later, because it is a bit thick, and I need to do more research and see if I can find some illustrations.