ПОДОРОЖ ЛІМІНАЛЬНИМ ПРОСТОРОМ У НОВЕЛІ-КАЗЦІ АПУЛЕЯ "АМУР І ПСИХЕЯ"

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Background. Old myths, fairy epos, literary works of antique times retain for us worldviews of former generations about the periods of transitivity in the history of mankind, about cardinal social changes and initiation processes, magical practices and the rituals that have entered into the cultural heritage of the mankind and require today's comprehension. The images of the Greek and the Roman gods in Apuleius' short novel-tale, a trial of Psyche, the main heroine, during the ceremonies of transition between the two worlds, profane (human) and sacral (divine), certify to specific mythological allusions linked to the notion of liminality. The purpose of our research is a linguistic and cultural analysis of the interpretation of the signs of liminality in multilevel space of Apuleius' work. The topicality lies in the correlation of the research of ancient Roman prose with modern tendencies of national and foreign scientific experience. Methods. In the course of research, the following linguistic and literary methods were used: descriptive, comparative, linguistic and cultural as well as contextual. The object of research is an original text of Apuleius's short novel-tale; the subject is the evidence of liminality on different levels of the work (formal, meaningful, lingual and others), special attention was paid to representation of the loci of the liminal space. Results. The liminal space of a short novel-tale, where the process of spiritual and physical transformation of the main heroine takes place, doesn't have clear limits and is placed between the real and the imaginative world, between the dream and reality. This advances the chronotope of the work to space characteristics of the fairy tale genre. To define the parameters of a multidimensional liminal space of the work we were helped with the analysis of the loci of the otherworld. Conclusions. A research of the interpretation of the signs of liminality on different levels of the work revealed an embodiment of liminality on the level of characters: the Greek and the Roman gods; the main heroine, who overcomes the most important ceremonies of the transition – marriage, initiation, burial and gets the second birth as immortal goddess; at a lingual level: lingual game and the use of oxymorons, on narrative level: definition of the limits of liminal space in accordance with three periods of transition. The analysis of loci represented in the work demonstrated that the structure of liminal space in vertical projection corresponds to three components of mythological world structure of ancient Greeks: the sky, the earth and the underworld, complicated by two-level structure of the otherworld: the "white" world (the paradise, Elysium), the "dark" world (the Tartar).