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Myths of Ancient Mexico. By MICHEL GRAULICH. Translated by BERNARD R. ORTIZ DE MONTELLANO and THELMA ORTIZ DE MONTELLANO. The Civilization of the American Indian Series, vol. 222. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997Photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Tables. Figure. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xii, 370 pp. Cloth, $32.95.
Myths of Ancient Mexico provides an analysis of Mesoamerican mythology based on the structuralist procedures applied to North and South American data in Levi-Strauss's Mythologiques. While Graulich's analysis is focused on alphabetic texts from sixteenthcentury central Mexico, he also incorporates sources from elsewhere in colonial and contemporary Mesoamerica. The main argument of the book- appropriately for a structuralist study-can be briefly summarized. Origin myths from throughout Mesoamerica are shown to share the same basic structure, a narrative "of rupture between the sky and the earth as the consequence of a transgression, of an expulsion from paradise to darkness, and then a return to similar paradise thanks to the victory of heroes over darkness and death" (p. 9). Graulich outlines...