Mythological Space Research Articles

MYTH IN "NOMADIC NOVELS" BY S.SANBAEV (ARTISTIC SPACE AND TIME)

Myth is not only a source of “eternal” plots and archetypes, but also has a structuring effect on the organization of space and time of a work of art. A particularly close connection with folklore and mythology is observed in national literature.The purpose of the article was to analyze the features of the organization of space and time in S. Sanbaev's “Nomadic novels” as a reflection of the mythological and national picture of the world, which is a new approach in the study of S. Sanbaev's work.During the study, literary and mythopoetic analysis of the text was used, which allows us to better understand the author’s intention, identify hidden meanings and codes, as well as systematic research for a holistic analysis of the work. As a result of the study, a number of provisions were established that reveal the scientific significance of the work. The cyclicity of time is reflected in the roll call of epochs, the succession of the hero's name, the repetition of storylines, as well as in the construction of the cycle of stories itself. The circular construction of the stories is enhanced by the motifs of the road and returns, which are cross-cutting in the cycle. The mythological space is characterized by a tripartite structure of the universe: the division into the upper -middle -lower worlds. The horizontal cosmogonic model with orientation to the cardinal points is clearly traced in the principle of the structure of the Shakpak temple. The practical significance of the work is that the article can be used as an additional educational material in preparation for lectures and seminars on the discipline “Mythopoeticanalysis of literary text”, “Methods of literary criticism” in higher educational institutions, as well as in university special coursesin the creative laboratory of writers.

TEMPLE OF THE SUN BY I.A. BUNIN AND SYRIAN STORIES BY S.S. KONDURUSHKIN: INTERSECTION POINTS

The article is devoted to the personal and creative connections between Ivan Bunin and the forgotten writer Stepan Semenovich Kondurushkin (1874-1919). Known cases of communication between writers are described in detail: correspondence, meetings, as well as their reviews of each other’s work. From 1898 to 1903 Kondurushkin worked as a teacher in the Middle East at the invitation of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society. In 1901-1902 Kondurushkin began to write the first journalistic and literary texts about the East. Bunin traveled to the East in 1903, 1907, 1910-1911 and 1913, to publish the first sketches of the future book Temple of the Sun - since 1908. Both authors carefully read each other’s works. The article compares the two-volume collection of stories by Kondurushkin Syrian Stories (1908-1910) and Bunin’s Temple of the Sun (1917). Both authors speak about the East in the words of sacred texts and model a certain mythological space, where they are not just observers, but also participants in the process - they experience the myth together with the acting heroes, and are also endowed with the ability to act within the myth. In addition, both authors are characterized by the exploitation of the metaphor ‘East is the grave’, in which the problem of ‘time’ as a category is leveled and reduced solely to understanding everything in the category of ‘space’. The history of the East after the time of myth does not exist for the writers, and therefore the East is ‘buried’ under the slabs of sacred texts. Special attention is paid to the representation of the image of Moses.

Oriental Punk Aesthetics and Youth Discourse Construction in Chinese Animated Films: Taking the New Gods Series of Animated Films as an Example

Although punk culture was introduced into China from the West, with the rapid development of Chinese science and technology and the enhancement of the consciousness of national discourse construction, Chinese punk culture has shown a breakthrough trend. Meanwhile, as a significant representation of youth subculture, punk culture always pays attention to youth culture's reality to convey young people's spiritual needs. With the development of the Internet, the attitude of youth has gradually changed from complete rebellion to looking out from the edge to the center, showing the tension of resistance and compromise. In this paper, the author studies Oriental punk aesthetics and youth discourse construction in Chinese animated films, and the New Gods series of animated films is taken as a case study. According to analysis, it is concluded that the New Gods series connects the punk style with national identity, finds the commonality between punk culture and the spiritual core of the films, and fits with the discourse of youth in the context of national culture, so as to construct a localized mythological space based on national historical experience and explore the mode of youth culture with Oriental punk aesthetics.

Етноконцепт ВІТЕР у народній обрядовості та світобаченні українців (на прикладі фразеології Середнього Полісся)

One of the urgent tasks in the field of modern phraseology is the ethnopsychological and linguocultural analysis of concepts symbolic of the Ukrainian people. An ethno-concept symbolizing one of the most powerful natural elements – wind – was chosen for consideration. The significance of the image of the wind in Ukrainian culture is demonstrated through the prism of folk diversity, but the symbolism of the wind is best revealed in phraseological units, since it is in the semantics and structure of fixed sayings that relict information about traditional ways of managing the economy, customs and beliefs, family relationships and other spheres of life of the Ukrainian people is contained. Phraseologisms are an extremely ancient and powerful layer of language, which is studied according to various aspects (semantic, structural, ideographic, cognitive, stylistic, associative-figurative), but today the conceptual approach to the processing of phraseological units is becoming more and more relevant, because the concept serves to explain units of worldview or mental resources of our consciousness and that information structure that reflects human knowledge and experience; it is an operative unit of memory, mental lexicon, conceptual system and language of the brain, the whole picture of the world, which is reflected in the human psyche. A comprehensive analysis of the ethno-concept of the wind is unconditional evidence of the entry of Ukrainian spiritual culture into the world mythological space.

The Bohai Sea and Mount Penglai: In search of a maritime religiosity in imperial China

Apart from the history of the Chinese sea goddess Mazu, there are other religious themes that have also been derived from the maritime world that require more of our academic attention. This paper provides a historical overview of a sea-related theological conceptualisation that originated in the Bohai Sea: the maritime and transcultural history of Mount Penglai, a legendary immortal island of Chinese mythology. The history of Penglai is normally treated within a mere Daoist context and is not explored in its theological and philosophical implications in relation to the sea. I will suggest, by contrast, that the history of Penglai offers a unique perspective on Chinese maritime religiosity as it was conceptualised, practiced and imagined by various types of agents and individuals. In its own right, Mount Penglai represents a kind of maritime religiosity that was emanated from various approaches to it being constructed as a mythological space over the longue durée.

The Moon as the Patroness of Doubles and Magic. Miguel Ángel Asturias and His Guatemala Dream

The subject of this paper is the image of the Moon in the works of the Guatemalan indigenist writer Miguel Ángel Asturias. His artistic reality can undoubtedly be called magical. Nobel laureate, he let the voice and spirit of Guatemala into his works, revived the mythological and legendary past of his country. Here Maya myths, witchcraft and dreams are closely intertwined with reality. In Asturias’ Guatemala universe the Moon rules the over mythological space and time, carries the heroes into the world of dreams, rituals, magic and shapeshifting. The image of the Moon is the key to understanding Latin American literature, and within the artistic image of Latin American night helps a person to perceive himself and the true essence of being. The Moon is Asturias’ works possesses the property of mirror and dublicates reality, creates the doubles and is the one itself. In this paper we consider the influence of the moonlight on the landscape and the metamorphoses it initiates in the Asturias’s characters. The Moon becomes the conductor of the mystic gift to change the world by words in “Legend of the Singing Tablets”, helps the “Men of Maize” characters to unite with their naguals, reveals the image of love in the play “Kukulkan” and tunes the ritual time in all the works named.

BERTOLT BRECHT AND SLOBODAN SCHNEIDER: WAR. RELIGION. WOMAN. THEATER

Global issues fixed in the diachrony of world culture by the concept of "war", as well as modern methods of its aesthetic interpretation, are seen today as extremely promising for Ukrainian literary studies, which is now actively rethinking how and through which models the artistic representation of modern military events should take place and their reflection in experience/living.
 The article offers a comparative literary analysis of B. Brecht's plays "Mother Courage and Her Children" and S. Schneider's "Snake Skin", in which, in the setting of the Thirty Years' War in Europe of the 17th century. contains deep ethical and philosophical reflections on the war as such and aesthetic reflections of two outstanding European playwrights on the war events of which they became contemporaries.
 If B. Brecht’s play has many literary interpretations, including in Ukraine, S.Schneider’s play is being interpreted by Ukrainian literary studies for the first time. The intentions and artistic resources of both texts are compared through the conceptual series War – Religion – Woman – Theatre. In interpretation B. Brecht’s war is horizontal-processual and geographically dispersed, in S. Schneider’s she is cyclical and permanent, localized in a closed topographical and mythological space.
 It is illustrated how playwrights conduct a dialogue with the world cultural tradition regarding religion/faith as a factor in modern war, the peculiarities of female figurative potential and female (not)subjectivity in aesthetic interpretations of war belonging to the 20th century are revealed, B. Brecht’s "epic theater" is compared and S. Schneider’s symbolic and allegorical theater. The study complements the problematic field of modern humanitarian reflections, activated by Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine in February 2022.

Когда Кабан Учитель разожжет под землей свой огонь…: об одном персонаже бурятской мифологии Авторы: Н. Н. Николаева

This paper examines the image of Gakhai bagsha in fairy tales, heroic epic, shamanic invocations, and the folk calendar of the Buryats. The name of this character includes the gakhai ‘pig/boar’ component. At the same time, it is an anthropomorphic character with obvious mythological roots. Gakhai bagsha is a type of simpleton under the guise of a sage who emerges victorious from conflict situations thanks to his luck and coincidence. The epic Gakhai bagsha is rather close to the deity of the shamanic-buddhist character. An indispensable attribute of Gakhai bagsha in fairy tales and epics is a pig’s / boar’s head. The mythological basis of this outfit appears in the folk calendar. Gakhai bagsha making a fire under the ground is associated with the arrival of spring and the thawing of the earth. In shamanic invocations, he is called the owner of the earth. The image of Gakhai bagsha is rooted in ancient ideas about the owner of the earth embodying the idea of fertility and the heavenly deity controlling the rains and fertility. Not only did the ancient Mongols have such representations. They were also widespread in the world culture. Another aspect of this image is the reminiscence of the totemistic cult of the boar-first ancestor. Gakhai Bagsha is likely to have appeared in the folklore and mythological space of Buryats through the Khori-Buryat people. Due to historical reasons, Khori-Buryats were longer influenced by the Mongol world and preserved the ancient Mongolian mythological and totemistic representations.

Топос кладбища в романах Е.Г. Водолазкина

The subject of research is the cemetery topos as one of the most important constructs of the artistic space of novels “Laurus”, “Aviator”, “Brisbane”, “Justification of the Island” by the modern Russian writer E.G. Vodolazkin. The relevance of work is explained by the interest of Russian literary studies in the study of literary process of the 20th–21st centuries and the work of one of the brightest, original and authoritative modern prose writers – Eugene Vodolazkin. The purpose of research is to study poetic and functional features of the cemetery topics in the above-mentioned novels. The research methodology is based on a combined approach, including histori-cal and cultural, mythopoetic, structural, comparative and receptive methods. As a result of our research, we establish that Vodolazkin creates a complex, symbolic space that changes and “lives” the novel's story along with the heroes. The cemetery appears in three aspects: as a mythological, commemorative and dialogue space. The image of cemetery is created with the help of smells, light and color, as well as textures (tactile effect), which are also “markers” of positive space or, conversely, space with negative connotations. Thus, the cemetery is one of the main toposes in Vodolazkin’s novels, it is a space for unification, overcoming the “gap” – temporal, spiritual, cultural, linguistic, national, etc. The results obtained in the course of study can be applied in the preparation of university courses on the Russian literature history at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as special courses and special seminars.

Geographies of Capitalism in Romanian Postcommunist Literature and Film: Villages, Cities, Markets

This article analyses the ways in which the rural – understood in its double nature, of traditional mythological space, and of degraded periphery of the urban – was both instrumentalized by the cultural and political discourses within Romanian postcommunism, and revealed as a symptomatic field in which the harsh economic realities of the post-1989 implementation of neoliberal capitalism in Eastern Europe became evident. The first part of the article describes how misplaced public policies during 1980s’ communism favoured the underdevelopment of the rural. Later, the process of transition encouraged both external migration, which depopulated Romanian villages, and the internal migration of the urban middle-class to an economically more secure rural area. The second part of the article analyses – from a materialist viewpoint – corresponding topics developed in Romanian contemporary literature and films (authored by Adrian Șchiop, Lavinia Braniște, Bogdan Mirică, and Radu Muntean). These works envision the rural/periurban as an asymmetrical geography, where violence toward the vulnerable is enacted, where the loss of community values leaves black markets flourish, and the capitalist dismantling of social ties becomes striking.

Осмысление лингвокультурного потенциала имен славянских мифологических птиц в русской лирике XX столетия

The paper analyzes the principles of introducing in lyrical contexts (in individual author’s interpretation) of the images of magic birds, representing one of the sectors of the East Slavic mythological space: images of Sirin and Alkonost. Based on the material of lyric works of a number of authors of the twentieth century. (B. K. Semenov, V. A. Rozhdestvensky, M. Vega) the study demonstrated how poets develop the tradition of a “twofold” (in their close relationship) understanding of these images, laid down by the lyrics of A. Blok, which, in turn, goes back to ideas formed over a long period of time in a linguistic picture of the world of the Eastern Slavs. In keeping with this tradition, Sirin and Alkonost symbolize opposite states of the human soul, which the representative of the Slavic culture often experiences as interacting inextricably, complementing and conditioning each other. The development of this tradition by lyricists of the twentieth century is carried out in accordance with an individual author's way, which in each case gives the lyrical work a conceptual aesthetic and linguistic-stylistic originality. It appears that the results obtained represent an interest for further research both in the field of stylistics of artistic speech as in the field of ethnolinguistics.

Philosophical Foundations for Understanding the System of Law

The article deals with a problem of correlation between the evolution of the main ideas pattern, philosophical foundations of the intellectual life of age and historical state-law systems. The method is a cyclic conception of history, according to which on every round of historical processes, the framework of state-law system development was formed by the main ideas presumption about space, time, the mul­tiplicity of the world and so on. According to it, authors argue that the existence of some milestones in the history of ideas gives us an opportunity to highlight some phases of the state-law system evolution, such as temple-state with its mythological space and cyclic time; polis state, which emerged from rationalization and understanding the world is multiple; medieval theological state with its dualism and teleological history conception; modern state based on separation of abstract conceptions such as nation and their embodiment.

Epistemological approaches of nonclassical science and the general theory of myth

The subject of this research is the analysis of epistemological approaches offered by nonclassical science towards the ontology of myth in the context of nonclassical mythology. Myth is viewed as a basic cultural universal, responsible for the semantic field of culture; while mythopoeia is perceived as a characteristic and important function of consciousness. The goal of this article lie in outlining the opportunities opened to the researchers of myth in the context of shift of the scientific paradigm. It is namely thanks to the scientific paradigm that mythological space of culture is no longer perceived as the antagonist of science, but as the essential aspect of its effective functionality. Methodological framework is comprised of the approaches developed and accepted in nonclassical science. Examination of myth through the prism of nonclassical science reveals new perspectives that allow studying myth as an integral whole, without separating into scientific disciplines. It should be taken into account that myth plays a significant, although not always positive role in science and society, interacting with science upon the principle of mutual complementarity. In particular, myth helps to advance and substantiate the scientific hypotheses, form scientific worldviews and images of the future. The approaches of nonclassical mythology, in turn, reveal that in the modern conditions, myth becomes the instrument of politics and the method for solving social issues, manifesting as a factor of national security and mechanism for manipulation. However, its further study requires the development of the universal theory of myth, the basic prerequisites of which have already been created.

Myroslav Skoryk's opera "Moses" based on a poem by Ivan Franko as a narrative of the classical-romantic ideal

The purpose of the article is to explore the main narratives of Myroslav Skoryk's opera "Moses" based on the poem by Ivan Franko, from the point of view of the classical-romantic aesthetic platform of the struggle for the ideal. The crisis of modern society motivates the composer to fulfill the role of the Guide, which requires urgent changes in the vector of artistic development in the direction of highly spiritual philosophical, and ethical orientation. The methodology is to consider the psychological narrative of the romantic creative orientation of I. Franko (R. Golod), to analyze modern problems of opera in Ukraine (I. Gamkalo), to use comparative analysis of epoch-making problems in Ukraine of early XX - XXI centuries and to compare egalitarian and elitist understanding the orientation of the work of M. Skoryk (L. Kiyanovska). The scientific novelty of the approaches is related to the consideration of the composer's narrative discourse as an appeal to the generalized intonation and figurative symbolism of musical stylistics, rather than the stylization of certain historical or ethnic components. For the first time, M. Skoryk's opera "Moses" was considered as a work that foretells a difficult path to freedom, prosperity, and happiness. Conclusions. The work expresses a narrative focus on the synthesis of the classical-romantic compositional-formative construct with a generalized-symbolic "timeless" understanding of philosophical and poetic imagery. In this context, the church's monodic trichord or appeal to the figurative sphere of M. Lysenko's vocal works express narratives of turning to God and the idea of the dream homeland, which ultimately forms a personal mythological space of existence.

K voprosu o meste i roli kolodcev v mifologicheskih predstavleniyah vostochnyh slavyan domongol'skoj epohi

Based on the analysis of ancient Russian chronicles, archaeological data and folklore sources, the publication reconstructs the ideas and beliefs of the Eastern Slavs of the Old Russian era associated with wells, which represented in the minds of our ancestors a certain mythological space between the world of people and the sacred underground world. The authors point to the obvious connection of the pagan cult of wells with the cults of water and earth, as well as the ideas of our ancestors about the afterlife. In their opinion, the custom of worshiping wells is one of the oldest traditions in ancient Slavic paganism, which existed for several centuries after the adoption of Christianity.

The ‘wild hunt’ in the long story by V. Korotkevich. A new interpretation of the medieval legend

The article considers a transformation of the Western European motif of the ‘wild hunt’ in V. Korotkevich’s story King Stakh’s Wild Hunt. The author gives an overview of folklore motifs typical of the ‘wild hunt’ phenomenon in the Western and Eastern European traditions. With origins in folklore, the ‘wild hunt’ motifs find their way into works of many writers in the late modern to contemporary period: the ‘wild hunt’ is localised on the edge of the mythological space and retains a fixed set of meanings. Most commonly, the ‘wild hunt’ features at the intersection of two domains. The first one is a complex of motifs inherited from the ancient myths and legends of the Germanic ‘Wütendes Heer.’ The second consists of the attributes of actual hunting. Taking a cue from The Hound of the Baskervilles — an obvious inspiration behind the story — and making use of the motifs traditionally associated with the legend, Korotkevich deconstructs the medieval myth, reducing it to an adventurous technique, only to reinstate it with new and unique meanings. The ‘wild hunt’ becomes a symbol of the ignorance, fear and despondency that have the world in their grip.

Rethinking the DMZ as the commons: the affective possibilities of the DMZ

ABSTRACT This study provides a critical analysis of the representation of the DMZ in South Korea as an eco-peace area in the post-Cold War era, shedding light on how to deconstruct the Eco-Peace-Oriented Discourses (EODs) and to unveiling the marginalized nature of the DMZ and border society. Challenging how the current academic discourses distort the nature of the DMZ as a mythological space, this article aims to provide an alternative perspective to the DMZ border society by focusing on the affective relationality of landmines with environment and humans in the border area. In particular, it argues that we should rethink the DMZ as the marginalized border society by paying attention to the following three aspects: (1) the main features of EODs; (2) the gap between the mythology of the EODs and the marginalized reality of the DMZ border society; and (3) the slow violence of landmines and the internalized, invisible, and affective marginalization of the border society.

The Films of Aleksey Fedorchenko: Between Cultural Mythmaking and Playing with a Document

This article studies the films of Alexey Fedorchenko in order to discover the dominant features of his artistic world. This is based on the guiding principles of documentary filmmaking, with its commitment to fact, the reliability of archival sources, trust in physical reality, and addressing the laws of the art of presentation, where a free play with reality becomes a dominant feature in its most diverse forms from documentation to mystification. The director creates his own coherent world of fiction and non-fiction, based on strategies of the cultural matrix of mythmaking as a means of understanding and experiencing the “arrangement” of the world. The purpose of the article is to study Fedorchenko’s films in order to discover the dominant feature of his artistic world. The first methodological basis for the analysis of his films is a cultural concept of art where art is understood not only as the self-consciousness of culture, but also as an object that depends on all subsystems of culture, both material and spiritual. The cinematography of Fedorchenko stems from a special type of artistic consciousness, which determines (predetermines) the subject and conceptual sphere of his artistic expression. Analysing the films of Fedorchenko, the author identifies the dominant feature of his artistic consciousness, which is focused on a reflective attitude towards culture and traditions. This type of artistic consciousness is understood as culture-centric. The culture-centric type of artistic consciousness ignores nature and its mimetic imitation, but at the same time, the dominating idea determining the source of artistic creation becomes a conscious attitude to culture as material that requires interpretation in a new context, as a space that generates meanings. Fedorchenko uses myth as source material and cultural space in his films. However, he does not deal with the cinematic adaptation of myths. He creates them on his own, using the logic of a mythological narrative, the peculiarities of mythological space and time. That is why the second methodological basis of the article is the classical concepts from A. Losev, R. Barthes and M. Eliade. The author mostly refers to documentaries and feature films by the director, as well as his mockumentaries. The study identifies certain algorithms in which documentary historical events acquire the characteristics of myth, and mythmaking becomes a key to understanding the truth.

Мифоритуальное пространство медвежьего праздника северных манси

Мифоритуальное пространство медвежьего праздника северных манси

Символические мотивы в романе А. М. Ремизова «Часы»

The paper is to analyze symbolic motifs in A. Remizov’s novel Clock (1908), which is considered as a neo-mythological text. Myth-poetic, mythological, semiotic and hermeneutical methods enable to understand the novel’s neo-mythological structure, to explore symbolic motifs such as the images of time, dream, unconsciousness and nature, which create together a special mythological space, expressing the writer’s compassionate concern for people and their miserable life. The paper aims to identify these symbolic motifs and examine their structure-forming role in connection with the writer’s world view position. The time shown on the clock is symbolic. It restricts and deceives people, whose depressed position is reflected in the motifs of dreams and unconsciousness. Their semantic meanings demonstrate a lack of fraternal love in people and imply their doomed fortune. Based on comparing the description of natural phenomena in the beginning and the ending sections of the novel, the author concludes that human can find a way out of the tragic situation with the help of faith in goodness. Depicting people’s suffering, Remizov shows the destructive power of the evil and expresses his idea of creating a new world at the cost of destroying the present one.