Bedina, . N, Panova, A. S.. N MYTH ABOUT TWINS IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH ANTI-WAR LITERATURE // Proceedings of Petrozavodsk State University. 2018. No 4 (173). DOI: 10.15393/uchz.art.2018.141


Literary studies

MYTH ABOUT TWINS IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH ANTI-WAR LITERATURE

Bedina
N. N.		Northern (Arctic) Federal University named after M. V. Lomonosov
Panova
A. S. 		Northern (Arctic) Federal University named after M. V. Lomonosov
Keywords:
myth about twins
sacrifice
Second World War
Holocaust
contemporary British literature		 Summary: The myth about twins becomes relevant in times of crisis, when the old world collapses and people understand the need for some universal basis for a new world. One form of such base is a sacrificial death of the twins (or one twin). Actualization of archaic myth in the literature of the XXI century is associated with the comprehension of the results of the Second World War and a premonition of possible new disaster. The article attempts to analyze the mythological code in the contemporary British anti-war novel on the example of two texts: “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas” by John Boyne (2006) and “Two Brothers” by Ben Elton (2012). The structuralsemiotic methods of analysis enable to reveal the mythological tradition elements in the artistic world of these texts. In John Boyne’s novel structure of the myth is implemented fairly consistently and can be easily read. In Ben Elton’s novel mythological code is not so obvious, but here it is possible to identify structural elements dating back to the archaic myth about twins. Common to both texts are motifs of the same birth dates of the characters, their external similarity, re-dressing, border chronotope and finally, sacrificial death. Ben Elton and John Boyne, referring to the twins’ archetype, thereby reproduce the logic of myth: the world plunging into chaos and world rebirth. The myth about twins as a metaphor is deployed in the artistic text in different ideological and philosophical problems: friend-or-foe, I and other, human and world. In the chosen novels, the teleology of cosmogonic myth aimed against fascism, which is consisted their humanistic idea.



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