| Abstract [eng] |
One of the most interesting contemporary novelists John Fowles’s creation can be considered as a deep and broad excursus to the development of western culture, philosophy, mythology, art and history. In literature critics Fowles’s creation is analysed in these aspects: 1) as the existential projections of romance proceeding the traditions of the romanticism literature, 2) as the holder of existential literature traditions, 3) as the supporter of postmodern tradition in literature, 3) as the representative of myth poetic. The aim of this thesis is to give the structural analysis of the myth of Orpheus and to apply it in the analysis of Fowles’s prose. The structure of the myth of Orpheus reveals three parts and groups all the myth elements in them. The trinomial structure of the myth of Orpheus creates the binary oppositions that help to reveal all the layers of the myth, the main conflicts and relations. Virgil’s “Georgics” and Ovid’s “Metamorphosis” - the first written resources where we meet the myth of Orpheus, already proves that the myth has lots of invariants and interpretation possibilities. Virgil and Ovid represent the myth of Orpheus in very different ways. Virgil uses the myth of Orpheus as the complex part of the myth of Aristeus which helps to explain the reason how he lost his bees and why the natural order is discomfited. Ovid in his “Metamorphosis” argues Virgil and depicts the myth of Orpheus as the main centre of narration and the base for the other myths to exist. Orpheus being the mediator figure of the myth reveals his real status when he goes to the underworld to bring back his beloved Eurydice. The main Fowles’s novels where we meet the transformations of the myth of Orpheus are “The Magus” and “The Collector”. The composition of “The Magus” reveals the same structures as we meet in the myth of Orpheus; it depicts the inner development stages of the main character – Nicolas Urfe. The reader of the novel is made to go through the myth building process, to experience the role of Orpheus and Eurydice in the postmodernist cultural context. Fowles’s “The Collector” must be perceived as the destruction of the myth of Orpheus. It represents the anti myth creation based on the main myth elements and structural composition. The aim of the novel is to prove that the classical version of the myth of Orpheus is impossible in the XXth century. The conflict between Caliban and Miranda describes the modern Orpheus as an ugly and oppressive personage who doesn’t want to rescue his Eurydice but imprisons her in the underworld. |
