Myths of Ancient Mexico provides an analysis of Mesoamerican mythology based on the structuralist procedures applied to North and South American data in Lévi-Strauss’s Mythologiques. While Graulich’s analysis is focused on alphabetic texts from sixteenth-century 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 this deep structure in chapters 2 through 5; chapters 6 and 7 reveal this structure in the myths of the Toltecs and of the Mexica migrations, in an analysis that raises interesting questions about the “historicity” of these accounts. The book concludes by shifting from narrative analyses to consider the nature of the several central Mexican “paradises.”

Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism emphasized fragments —from practices of bricolage to the ultimately incomplete instantiations of langue in parole. Appropriately (and in part inevitably, given the structuralist approach), fragmentariness is also a feature of Graulich’s text. He draws on dozens of sources from a number of times and places, and the detail and length of these sources varies —he goes so far as to characterize his sources as “fragments” (pp. 9, 264), “bits of sentences” (p. 9), and “in a bad state” (pp. 33, 43). The contents of these “fragmentary” sources do not always overlap; as a result the chapters do not always have tightly linear arguments or smooth internal transitions. Rather, they contain explorations of a number of themes, whose contours are shaped by the particular details of the sources. Fragmentariness also characterizes Graulich’s use of individual myths as he builds his deep structure. His argument moves from parts of sources to parts of sources with great speed and frequency; with the exception of the Popol Vuh discussion at the end of chapter 5, one never gets a clear sense of the total, integrated contents of any one source. To his credit, Graulich does partially avoid a final form of typical structuralist fragmentation—the separation of myths from the specificity of their social, historical, and political contexts and uses. Graulich’s insightful discussion of Mexica myths of Tollan and of the Mexica migration demonstrates how their narratives deviate from his “deep structure”; the author then explains this variance in relation to particular Mexica strategies of political legitimization.

Graulich’s discussion of the specific contours of the Tollan and migration narratives reveals the great achievement—and potential —of this book. Graulich has managed to bring dozens of narratives together and reveal their commonalties in convincing, multifaceted detail—the connections he reveals between the Popol Vuh and the stories of Quetzalcóatl at Tollan are frankly thrilling. Although —or because?—his approach is synthetic, usually static, and pan-Mesoamerican, Graulich makes an important contribution to future studies by providing a background of general themes against which specific examples from specific times and places can be compared, contrasted, and thus be better understood. This potential of Myths of Ancient Mexico should be particularly useful for (though certainly not limited to) studies of pre-Columbian iconography and political ideology, providing a central Mexican focus that is a welcome addition to the currently predominant narrative-interpretive models derived from Maya sources. In sum, I highly recommend this book for scholars of Mesoamerica, past or present. It offers a rich and detailed framework for new scholarship, not just on mythology, but on the multiple aspects of Mesoamerican life (political, visual, social) influenced by religious beliefs.