The Great Mechanic’s Archetype In Utopian Discourse In The 19th – 20th Centuries

Abstract

The figure of the Great Mechanic is associated with the Enlightenment and deism. German romanticists, who dreamt of creating an ideal world based on the principle of romantic irony, gave it new life in utopian discourse in the 19th – 20th centuries. E. Hoffmann transformed the archetype of the Great Mechanic and determined the main lines of its development. Demiurgic ambitions of the “skillful watchmaker” were reflected in the deeds of the Benefactor (E. Zamyatin), Tuskub (A. Tolstoy) and Big Brother (G. Orwell). An archetypical affinity of these images suggests genetic links with utopia of a living person. The object is the archetype of the Great Mechanic in utopian discourse in the 19th – 20th centuries. The purpose is to determine the peculiarities of the basic archetype in the texts by E. Zamyatin, A. Tolstoy and G. Orwell. The tasks are: to determine a demiurgic component in E. Hoffmann’s pretext; to analyse archetypical elements in the images of the Benefactor, Tuskub and Big Brother; to correlate the results in order to determine conceptually significant connections; to determine certain system peculiarities of utopian discourse in the 19th – 20th centuries. The methodology suggests the complex usage of techniques of comparative analysis. So, utopian discourse of the 19th – 20th centuries is an organic whole, determined by unity of archetypical bases. The archetype of the Great Mechanic played one of the main roles. The results and methodology can be used in interdisciplinary research into the problem of interaction between cultural phenomena.