Peculiarities of Mythology in Latin American Literature

Abstract

In his article the author tries to answer the question: where does the mythological aura of Latin American literature come from? It is explained by some peculiar typological features of Latin American literature. The main feature of the formation of its artistic language consists in the fact that it has the definite date of birth. It comes back to Christopher Columbus’ Journal of his first voyage where some permanent images and basic mythological motives of Latin American literature are revealed. During the first three centuries of its development the Spanish-American literature in contrast to the literature of the Old World, did not base on the folkloric substratum, that’s why its main trend was an elaboration of its own tradition. Tradition is a sum of stable artistic elements. The article highlights three layers of such artistic elements. 1) Those that were born at the time of the conquest (the basic opposition Old World / New World, which expressed the perception of America as the world essentially different from the European world, the images of the “good” and “bad” savage and others). 2) Those that paraphrase the European motives, plots, oppositions. 3) The main and the broadest layer are the universal mythological elements: basic oppositions, such as life / death, earthly / celestial, masculine / feminine, corporal / spiritual; the images of the earth, water, river, tree, sky, sun, moon and others. These elements engendered at the dawn of human culture correspond perfectly to the notion of the primary element of cultural tradition. They also attract for their universality, since they do not belong to a definite culture and therefore can be used by any culture and can be represented as own heritage. Finally, the very peculiar use of universal images in Latin American literature must be taken into account. Accentuating them, the writer resorts to various artistic methods which create together the impression of another reality that exists behind everyday reality. This kind of reality is hidden, mythological, primordial, archetypal and timeless.