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Sacred-Secular Complementarity In Al Filo Del Agua And Pedro Paramo: An Inquiry Into Mythmaking, Floyd F. Merrell

Latin American Studies ETDs

Structuralism is the methodological approach employed in this study of two contemporary Mexican novels. The technique, including logico-mathematical relationships, schemata, and terminology, consists generally of an adaptation of Claude Lévi-Strauss' structural studies in anthropology and particularly in his interpretation of myth. The "deep-structure-surface-structure" dichotomization, a fundamental methodological premise we have adopted, is from Noam Chomsky by way of Ferdinand de Saussure's theory of linguistics. And the notion of "equilibrium," a dynamic interplay allowing for a genetic, developmental approach to structuralism, has been borrowed from the psychologist Jean Piaget.

Our initial objective was to formulate eclectically a method of structural analysis. …