Артефакти безсмертя у світовій літературі: лінгво-когнітивна реалізація (на матеріалі англомовних творів жанрів казка, готичний роман та фентезі)

Abstract

The present article reveals the research of the history of appearance and functioning of the artifacts of immortality in the world literature and presents the analysis of realization of their peculiarities at the linguistic and cognitive levels in the English literary works of such genres as fairy tale, gothic novel and fantasy. In the process of research the attention was focused on the analysis of the nominative aspect of verbalization of artifacts of immortality along with the structuring of the basic information got as a result of contexts analysis, where the artifacts of immortality were mentioned, and presented as a frame of the notional layer of the literary concept ARTIFACT OF IMMORTALITY. The article presupposes the application of the complex multiparadigmatic approach which is based on the properties of linguopoetic and conceptual analysis. Having analyzed the lingual verbalization aspects of variety of immortality artifacts in fairy tales and literary works of O. Wilde, J. R. R. Tolkien and J. K. Rowling, where the imaginary category these artifacts are associated with, is realized the best, and where it serves as the genre-forming feature, we found the set of lexemes denoting artifacts of immortality, the most frequently mentioned are the things with extraordinary properties which prolong the life or existence of their creators or owners. On the basis of system-functional and semantic analyses, it became possible to differentiate and group words that verbalize artifact of immortality in the analyzed literary works. The logically structured information about these artifacts reveals the basic mental visualization of the phenomenon, its components, the interaction of which is presented in the form of a frame, and demonstrates the knowledge about the immortality artifacts accumulated in the English fairy tales, gothic novel and fantasy: it is a living being or a thing that provides its owner or creator with immortality, originates from mythology or folklore or is the invention of the writer; it is made as a result of application of the magic, prayer or exceptional wish and through sacrifice, functions as the single copy or a set of components in a certain body or beyond it and can be destroyed by strength or the magic and under certain circumstances that leads to the death of its owner or creator. The present research shows the common features of the artifact of immortality as one of the bright examples of realization of the imaginary category and reveals its unchangeable nature in the English fairy tales, gothic novel and fantasy.