Концепт POWER в мифологической культуре английской национальной идентичности (на материале романа Дж. Р. Р. Толкина “The Lord of the Rings”)

Abstract

The study aims to identify the specifics of the linguocultural paradigm of the POWER concept as a marker of the mythological component of the English national identity in the formation and evolution of the unreal world in the fantasy genre in terms of dynamic synchrony. The paper is devoted to the study of the POWER concept in J. R. R. Tolkien’s novel “The Lord of the Rings” from the standpoint of linguistic and national-cultural continuity. The study is original in that it is the first to propose the author’s interpretation of the POWER concept as a construct represented by a hierarchy of mythological macro- and micro-concepts from the standpoint of dynamic synchrony in the fantasy genre. As a result, it has been proved that the POWER concept is presented as a construct of the corresponding mythological cultural code of the English conceptual sphere; the cultural matrix of the POWER concept of the modern English ethnic group is determined to a large extent by the change in the structure of the concept and, in particular, by the change in the connotative sign of the ‘power’ lexeme from positive to negative evaluation; the relevance of the identified linguocultural features is due to the mythologisation and demythologisation processes during the formation and functioning of the analysed concept in the general cultural and national context.