Abstract
The paper identifies the similarities and differences between fairy tale and rap narratives from the viewpoint of their specificity in space. Three spaces with their structuring topoi and loci have been investigated in their metaphorical, narrative, and symbolic manifestations. First: the spatial organization of rap and fairy tale narratives may include several possible worlds: the of the Hero’s past before his journey through life and fairy tale transformation; the of the Hero’s present after his transformation, marked by new loci consistent with his new status of the Hero, as well as the intangible symbolic world, the contact with which is a prerequisite for the revival of the fairy tale hero and optional – for the lyrical hero of rap narrative. Second: the of the Hero’s past based on ambivalent 'ghetto' topos whose conceptual space is constructed by conceptual metaphors life is a broken boogie, ghetto is belly of a monster, living in ghetto is fighting on the line of fire. Ghetto topos correlates with the topos of the forest as the place of the tale Hero trials, rooted in the archetypal motive of initiation. Third: the locus of home/house is conceptualized in rap lyrics and a fairy tale as a familiar, closed and safe space, contrasted, respectively, with topoi of 'ghetto' and forest with their manifesting loci on criteria open/closed, unexplored/familiar, mastered/unpredictable, dangerous – safe. Fourth: loci in alternative worlds may acquire anthropomorphic properties, changing along the axis of living/non-living and passive/active. Both in fairy tale and rap narratives, the symbolic world may involve the topoi of the road, sky, and forest based on archetypes, related to a spiritual search of the Hero.
Highlights
The problem of comparing such seemingly contrasting genres as a fairy tale, with its archaic archetypal roots, and modern rap, embodying the aesthetics of metamodernism (Van den Akker, Gibbons, & Vermeulen 2017), has a certain significance both for linguistics and interdisciplinary paradigm
Fairy tales almost always begin with determining the place and time of action, that is with a chronotope, which, without detail, reproduces the topoi and spatial relationships existing in the real world: "In front of the house there was a court, in which grew a juniper-tree" (The juniper-tree, 2014); "and as she was coming home she came to a stile" (The Old Woman and the Crooked Sixpence, 2017); "In the old days when London Bridge was lined with shops from one end to the other" (The Peddlar of Swaffham, 1913)
Using the combined method based on conceptual metaphor analysis and conceptual blending theory we offer a more detailed analysis of each of the metaphors
Summary
The problem of comparing such seemingly contrasting genres as a fairy tale, with its archaic archetypal roots, and modern rap, embodying the aesthetics of metamodernism (Van den Akker, Gibbons, & Vermeulen 2017), has a certain significance both for linguistics and interdisciplinary paradigm. Existential underpinning of narrative and symbolic correlations between the fairy tale and rap narratives comes down to answering eternal questions: the meaning of life and death, the fear inherent to the human beings, unity and alienation, which, in turn, rely on psychological and cultural archetypes Both types of narratives comprise the modus "as if" implying an alternative basically symbolic world, coexisting along with the material or pseudo-material worlds. The "plot" of a fairy tale and rap story is always based on the search for something – a different state, status, knowledge, which is metaphorically interpreted as the desire to be reborn, transformed, and move to another level in another world. Both in a fairy tale and rap lyrics any transformation implies at least two alternative worlds: the fatal world of predestination and the space of new opportunities and renewal
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