Structuralist theory posits that myths function as cognitive tools to resolve human contradictions

Claude Lévi-Strauss revolutionized the study of folklore by proposing that myths function as a form of logical mediation between binary opposites, such as life and death or nature and culture. In his massive four-volume work 'Mythologiques', he analyzed hundreds of indigenous narratives to show that they all share a deep mathematical structure. He argued that the mind uses 'mythemes'—the smallest units of a story—to resolve tensions that cannot be solved through literal logic.