КОНЦЕПТУАЛЬНІСТЬ МІФОЛОГІЧНОГО ПРОСТОРУ В ДИЛОГІЇ ДОРІС ЛЕССІНГ «МААРА І ДАНН»
FEATURES OF THE MYTHOLOGICAL SPACE IN DORIS LESSING`S DILOGY “MARA AND DANN”

Summary/Abstract: The article is devoted to the study the literary heritage of contemporary English writer, Nobel laureate, Doris Lessing. Author Creativity is a complex literary phenomenon, which researchers associate with the canons of postmodern literature. The object of literary research are the novels “Mara and Dann”, “The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog”, which belong to the late period of D. Lessing's creativity. The purpose of the article is to investigate the mythological features of artistic space and time, which determine the author's concept of the artistic picture of the world in the dilogy. The specific nature of the material of the study and the nature of the tasks necessitate using a set of methods: a cultural-historical method that made it possible to determine the factors influencing the author's work in the context of the period; structural-semantic method, which allowed to explore the features of the embodiment of the categories of time and space in novels; the mythocritical approach is actualized for the definition of mythological elements and the specific features of the image system in the “Mara and Dann” dilogy. As a result of the analysis of the D. Lessing`s novels it is concluded that the mythological space of the writer's novels has heterogeneous characteristics that are actualized through binary oppositions such as “north-south”, “living-dead”, “sacred-profane”, “dangerous -safe”, “right-left”, “open-closed”. The chronotope of the second part of the dilogy, “The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog” differs from the space-time continuum of the first novel. The binary oppositions “north-south” appear more implicitly in it, there is no sharp contrast in the image of topos, which is a characteristic feature of the first part of the dilogy. The novel chronotope inherent peculiarity is a cyclical concept of time, which is typical for the mythological tradition. Novel events occur in the distant post-apocalyptic future, on the territory of the continent of Ifrik. Humanity is experiencing a global catastrophe, which destroyed all the achievements of culture and terminated development. The main characters of the D. Lessing dilogy are situated in the “closed” space of the continent, they are forced to seek the sacred center of the universe in order to restore the lost knowledge of generations and regain power over the world, go through the process of “individuation” in order to gain “self”. The scientific novelty of the study is that a complex analysis of the space-temporal categories of the D. Lessing dilogy was carried out, as well as the structure-forming function of artistic time in novels. The analysis of the mythological aspects of the writer's dilogy will deepen the understanding of the specifics of D. Lessing artistic world, whose work reflects the neomythological tendencies of English literature of the ХХ – ХXI centuries, and will outline the vectors for further study of the works of contemporary Anglo-American writers whose works show neomifological features.

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