Поэтика мифа

The symbolic theory of Cassirer typifies the weaknesses of the neokantian Mahrburg school (especially the transcendental concept of communication isolating myth from social communications). This, however, did not prevent him from deepening the concept of intellectual peculiarity of myth, described as an autonomous (which remained unproved) symbolic cultural form characterized by unique methods of objectification of the sensual, shaping the environment, functioning as a system. Cassirer's ideas of structure are still old-fashioned, in the spirit of Qestaltpsychologie. It was only the creator of structural anthropology, Levi-Strauss, who was able to describe the logical mechanisms of mythological thinking (resulting in sign systems), so as to demonstrate its specific logical nature (metaphoric ability, mediations, bn-colage logic on the sensual level, etc.) and at the same time, contrary to Levy-Bruhl, its potential for generalization, classification and analyses without which the neolithic technical revolution would have been impossible. Levi-Strauss combined the cognitive aspect of myth, which was all the. 19th century ethnologists saw in it, and its specific method of thinking. Contrary to many, even to some structuralists (Barthes), Levi-Strauss views myth as a product of archaic thinking, correlated with the total semiotic nature of archaic societies. Levi-Strauss's ideas of – implicit (in ritual) and explicit mythology avoid the extremes of the ritual approach. It is true that the structural approach gives rise to its own difficulties (hence the distinctions between «semiotic» and «structural» aspects finding its expression in the dilemma: is myth equivalent to language or music?).

The «myth-ritual» literary criticism synthesizes ritualism (the Cambridge group, etc.) and Jungian philosophy with an element of the so-called «new criticism». The application of «myth-ritual» methods to the study of the Greek theatre and Shakespeare or such authors as Dante, Milton or Blake was undoubtedly successful, which is hardly true in the case of study of epos and knighty novels. The quest for implicit mythology in the realistic literature in the 18th and 19th centuries is yet inconvincing in view of possible counci-dence of forms stemming from tradition and those inspired by contemporary life. Thus, although the withdrawal from the traditional plot in «Robinson Crusoe» results in a complete dissociation with classical myth, the apotheosis of creation originates an «anti-myth». But the view of the history of civili-, zation as the product of everyman's efforts (and not a collective effort) reminds one of the mythological person alism and the narration itself imitates involuntarily the structure of myths about culture heroes.

The similarities between «initiation» and the Bildungsroman present another example. A third example: