CARNIVAL AND MYSTERIAL AS META-GENRE FACTORS OF DYNAMICS IN TRANSFORMATIONS OF LITERARY PERIODS

Abstract

Purpose of the paper is to outline a new approach to the classification of literary periods, in which the dynamics of change between the carnival and the mystery plays a key role. The contemporary theoretical discussions about meta-genre as a factor of periodization of literature have been outlined.

Methods. Hermeneutic. The theoretical ideas of B. Shalahinov about carnival and mystery as metaforms of world literature, which find their philosophical and poetological representation in different cultural and historical periods, are developed. The structural-semiotic analysis of key works of world literature was discussed in order to outline the mystery and carnival elements.

Results. The immanent specificity of carnival and mystery as meta-genre phenomena has been described and characterized as factor that influences the invariant of genre pattern. The texts of world literature (“Divine Comedy”, “King Lear”, “Cloud Atlas”, etc.), which outline the psychological features of the mysterial and carnival, as well as the thematic sections determined by these two metaforms have been analyzed. The actualization of the mystery in the discourse of post-postmodernism has been investigated. The inherent connection between the mysterial and carnival arising from the genetic interaction between Apollonian and Dionysian has been emphasized. Key works of Medieval and Renaissance epochs, as well as in the works of postmodernism and post-postmodernism, which reveal the correlation between carnival and mysterial, acquires an epistemological significance for defining thematic units represented in literatures as a result of the domination of one of two meta-genre phenomena.

Conclusions. Anthropological problems (simulacra reality, the situation of post-truth) become key ones in the discourse of British post-postmodernism and determine the specifics of the development of the British novel after 2000.