In the study of mythology, a mytheme is the irreducible part of a myth, a constant element (unlike a cultural meme ) that always appears interchanged and reassembled - "tied" was the image of Lévi-Strauss - with other related myths in various ways, or united in more complex relationships, such as a molecule in a compound. For example, the myths of Adonis and Osiris sharing a handful of elements, leading some researchers to conclude that they share the same source.
The resercher of popular legends Vladimir Prop considered that the unit of analysis was the individual story . Instead, mytheme is equivalent mythology to phonemes , morphemes and sememe in the linguistic structure divides language: meaning smaller units possible within a linguistic system.
In the 1950s, Claude Lévi-Strauss first adapted his technique of linguistic analysis to the analytical critique of myths. In his work on the mythological systems of primitive tribes, made on the analogy with the linguistic structure, he adopted the term mytheme , stating that the system of meaning within the myths is very similar to that of a linguistic system. This idea is questioned by Roman Jakobson , who considers the mytheme to be a concept (or phoneme) that has no meaning in itself, but appears through sociological analysis.
