MYTHOLOGICAL ELEMENT IN THE DETECTIVE GENRE

Abstract

It is common knowledge that modern mass culture originates from mythology and folklore, which contain basic value-related images and symbols, and specific recurrent motifs. Many scholars analyze them from the standpoint of such humanitarian sciences as text linguistics, cultural studies, philosophy, sociology, psychology etc. Linguo-cultural research into the mythological element of the detective genre and texts shows its cultural value, reasons of stable popularity and significance for understanding any modern and post-modern literary and other media texts, including literary, television, cinematographic, computer, graphic etc. by the recipients with different level of training and background knowledge. The conveyed linguo-cultural study of detective mediatexts provided confirmation that myths, their structure, motifs and images-symbols are an integral part of nearly any crime fiction product as a representative of the modern, mainly, urban popular culture. Furthermore, the mythological formula determines a certain framework for creating new detective plots and works. The study singled out intertextual links, and common features of the fairy tale, mythological and detective formulae, sacred religious texts, their language representation and interpretation in the crime fiction products. In addition, it is shown that detective texts perform various social function, including entertaining, cognitive, ideological and even therapeutic one. The paper considers the image of a typical detective story protagonist and his or her archetypal mythological basis, features and essential traits of character. The research deals with the myth-related invariant stable characteristics of the detective text products and analyzes apocalyptical motifs as one of the ways to represent the mythological element, both in form and content, in the modern detective works. The study shows the reasons and bases of the topicality of eschatological apocalyptical motifs as major semantic elements, related to the Judaic-Christian mythology and generally with the modern Western culture in its broad understanding.