FRENCH MIFOCRITIC IN THE LITERATURE AWARENESS

Abstract

The article describes the main directions of French myth criticism. The conceptual positions of well-known representatives of each direction in relation to the key concepts of “myth”, “mythology”, “mythical criticism”, “mythological analysis of a work of art” are revealed.

It is noted that a new surge in mythological reading of an artistic product in French science is observed in the second half of the twentieth century, when the problem arose to determine what was the primary: literature for a myth or myth for literature.

In this aspect, there occured three schools: the French sociological school, the French Filmology School, the Research Center for the Imaginary (Centre de Recherches sur l’Imaginaire).

The French sociological school considers myth and mythology through the prism of collective consciousness. Collective consciousness is based on the social state of the society. The society reproduces and loves itself through religion and mythology, where religion and mythology are connected with the sphere of sacred, while society and its members are connected with the sphere of profane.

The French school of filmology was formed in the postwar period and made a significant contribution to the theory of reception, in the format of which the mythocrylic searches were carried out.

They pointed to the mechanisms of mass culture, such as identification and projection, and which function as subject-object identification, form the mythological attitudes and make the transformation of the individual into a social one.

Later, the concepts of “image” (fr image) and “figurative/imaginary” (fr. imaginaire) were taken as the basis for the myth-critical research of Zhilber Duran and his associates, “les poéticiens du sujet”, who considered the myth in synchronic and diachronic relationships.

Thus, the French schools offered a new approach to the analysis of the mythological in the work of art through the prism of “imaginary” in synchronic and diachronic aspects, which formed the basis for many Ukrainian studies.