Myth and European Poetic Thinking in 1920 –1940s (Considering the Methodological Aspect)

The paper attempts to build an integral system of myth and determine its poetic function in the literature of the first half of the 20th century. There are a huge number of approaches to the study of myth as an unconscious symbol, but a myth becomes a literary phenomenon only when it is purposefully used by the author as part of his creative vision. Remythologization or the conscious return of literature to the original sources and archetypes in the work of W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, J. Joyce, and others are part of the poetic innovation of an entire literary era. The article briefly traces the history of remythologization, and the name of T.S. Eliot stands out as the first to state and fix a new attitude to myth (“‛Ulysses’, Order, and Myth”, 1923). Myth, according to Eliot, is not an unconscious “force” of the writer's creative imagination, but is conceived as a poetic category, as a means of recreating the aesthetic orderliness of a work from the chaotic reality. Conscious mythologization is also conditioned by the need to synthesize several heterogeneous creative structures in a single artistic whole. The reader conceives the presence of a myth in a literary work through the association of imagery with extra-textual plots, thereby fulfilling the author's intention. The paper, using the example of Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot and “The Wheel” by W.B. Yeats, shows how the suggestive archetypes and the variety of reader associations contribute to the timeless perception of the text (reading does not last in time, it is extremely generalized, cyclical, integral). All poetic means of remythologization are aimed at such a synchronous perception of the artistic time and space of the work, which acquires a mythologically universal character, becomes an artistic model of the world.