Ways of myth-making and their specifics (based on Umberto Eco’s literary and publicistic texts)

Abstract

The study aims to identify the specifics of myth-making techniques that are comprehended and tested by the 20th- and 21st-century European philosopher Umberto Eco in his numerous publicistic and literary texts. As a result of the study, classifications of the “traditional” ways of myth-making (the reference to traditional mythologized archetypes, the use of binary oppositions, etc.) and the “modern” ways (double coding, depersonalization, discreteness of history, etc.), determined by the cultural and historical context of postmodernism and post-structuralism were provided. Using these classifications, the significance and influence of myth and myth-making techniques on thinking, human behavior, and cultural and historical processes of past and modern eras were proven. The paper is novel in that by analyzing the complex of Umberto Eco’s texts, myth is considered as the most important construct both of human culture and human thinking. The mechanisms of constructing certain types of modern myths, as well as the ways of their influence on the mass consciousness, on historical and socio-cultural processes are described.