Mythopoetic chronotope of Rudolfo Anaya’s short novel “The Village the Gods Painted Yellow” in the paradigm of magical realism

The article determines the mythopoetic chronotope functions in Rudolfo Anaya’s short novel “The Village the Gods Painted Yellow” (1982). The study focuses on the elements of magical realism, which allows us to expand our understanding of the features characterizing creative thinking of the twentieth-century Mexican-American (Chicano) writer. The methodological basis of the work is formed by E.M. Meletinsky, A.F. Kofman and V.N. Toporov’s works concerning the concepts of “myth”, “mythopoetics”, “mythopoetic chronotope” and “magical realism”. The mythopoetic method is used to explore the literary appropriation ways of mythological images and motifs and their functions. The structural-semiotic method helps to determine the properties of space and time in the literary text with the identification of significant binary oppositions (according to Y.M. Lotman). The analysis reveals the features of the mythopoetic chronotope in the narrative, embodied in the text through the introduction of mythologems associated with the ancient Mayas’ ritual practices and archetypal oppositions (“friend – foe”, “north – south”, “life – death”). The article defines the specificity of the characters’ images in their interrelation with the principles of “poetics of supernormativity” typical of Latin American magical realism, the peculiarity of the author’s worldview and the substantial depth of the literary text.

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