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192 BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS
site self-deprecating irony that Calame insistently labels all the old assumptions
as "European." even as "European academic." to indicate
how useless they are (11-12. four times)-a d then identifies his own
approach as "deliberately European or Western and academic" (23).
We are briefly informed of local varieties of story-telling in New
Guinea. Burundi-Rwanda and the Himalayas which defy "European
categories." Of course they do. Except that in New Guinea. beside the
river Sepik. where Calame attended a staged recitation. the current
pidgin includes stori and sagi. But in general. in the wider prospect
which Calame does not even hint at. the oral traditions of Asia and Africa
and South America are a vast and still expanding galaxy which will
put every conceivable category to the test.
Calame's survey of mQthos in Greek literature occupies most of the
introduction (12-27), and would be even longer if the coda were integrated.
It does not advance the argument. Having dismissed myth as a
modern category. Calame hardly needs to show that it is unwarranted
by Greek usage. But he returns at intervals to the modern meaning. so
as to dissociate it from the Greeks as well. In Aristophanes. "telling stories"
is not the same thing for a hick father and a hip son (Wasps
I 174-1207). Calame accordingly devotes a page to paraphrasing "the
exchange between the sensible enemy of Cleon and the ridiculous heliast.
his friend" (sic). and discovers "perhaps the most paradoxical use of
the term mQthos in the Classical age." The several instances. though
widely ranging and contrasting, "have nothing to do with the history of
the gods or heroes!" The exclamation point is his. one of many.
Calame finally expounds his own semionarrative analysis (27-34).
The structures behind "discourse production" perate at three ascending
levels of abstraction. of which the second is by far the most elaborate
and distinctive. The "discursive structures" of the first level are
simply the particular place and time, Cyrene and its founding in the
past. with all the natural features and human activities pertaining to
both. This much hardly counts as structuralism. The"deep semionarrative
structures" of the third level are a few semantic clusters called "isotopies"
arising from the structures of the second level. but often forming
contradictions. and therefore close to ordinary structuralism. It is
the "semionarrative surface structures" of the second level that effectively
organize the production. and in name a. d substance much resemble
the narrative grammar of Greimas. though simple people might
be reminded simply of plot and character. These structures make up a
"canonical schema" consisting of four sequential phases called manipulation,
competence. performance and sanction.. and of four "actantial/actorial
positions" called Sender. Subject. Anti-subject and Predicate.
The schema is reinforced by semantic isotopies. to be subsumed in