Article

Name: Mythologeme of the river in the prose of writers – representatives of indigenous peoples of the North and Siberia

Authors: Natalya A. Nepomnyashchikh

Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Study of literature

Abstract: “River” is regarded as one of the most archaic mythologemes. Although inspired by mythological sources, the literature is not limited to them. The river concepts characteristic of folklore and tradition receive new meanings and interpretations. Moreover, motifs and plots related to rivers grow in number because new ones are created by writers. This study aims to examine the river motifs and plots and to analyze their semantics in the works of writers who are the representatives of the indigenous peoples of Siberia. Motif analysis is used to identify recurrent motifs and plots in the works of various authors. Semiotic analysis reveals their meanings and discovers not only their genetic relation to mythology and folklore but also new writers’ interpretations. On the one hand, all writers refer to the river as a poetic topos of the homeland. On the other hand, following the mythological tradition, the authors continue to consider the river as a boundary or a way-crossing to the other world, taking into account that in literature, it is the human who is responsible for the way “downstream” or for the will- movement to death after violating the moral laws. Even though the writers come from different national cultures of Siberia, their literary works share a common semantics of the river mythologeme because of its rich mythopoetic potential and due to equally pessimistic reflections of the authors on the fate of their peoples.

Keywords: plot, motif, rivers in literature and folklore, travelling by river, semantics of river in literature, Khanty literature, Mansi literature, Evenki literature, Yuvan Shestalov, Eremei Aipin, Galina Keptuke

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