MYSTERY AS A META-GENRE IN THE DRAMA OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Abstract

The article examines the specificity of existence of the renewed mystery genre as a meta genre in the twentieth century. The main literary study views on the definition of ancient and medieval / Christian ritual mystery are analyzed. The beginning of the twentieth century was full of a general feeling of catastrophe and tragic hopelessness. In artistic terms, the consequence of this was the activation of Christian issues, motives, plots, religious genres (miracles, morality and mystery). The most universal from the point of view of the ideological message and content for the writers of the twentieth century. was the matrix of the medieval mystery, which retained the ritual basis in its primary structure. This made it possible for the multilevel organization of the action and the space for it.
 The genre of medieval mystery is being modified, it ceases to be a purely form of religious action and acquires the quality of a meta genre. There is a transition from the religious sphere to the secular one, and the aesthetic one is replacing the didactic load. Mystery begins to exist on the edge of genres as a synthetic formation, showing intentions to “help” other genres.
 A large number of dramatic works of the twentieth century. ("Forest Song" by Lesia Ukrainka, "Iconostasis of Ukraine" by Vіra Vovk) comes close to the mystery, using its archetypal components: the ideas of faith in the absolute beginning, governing the eternal rotation of life and death, world order and harmony, death and rebirth, transformations of the human soul, chosenness and initiation associated with trials, sacrifice, deepening into mysticism. Such works are a certain imitation with elements of mythological or religious subjects. So, the twentieth century, actualizes a certain involvement of the semantic content of dramas to the mysteries, bringing the mystery to the level of the meta genre.