PECULIARITIES OF INTERPRETATION OF THE AFTRELIFE IN PAUL AUSTER’S NOVEL “TIMBUKTU”

The object of research in the article is a postmodernist interpretation of the afterlife in the novel “Timbuktu” by an American author Paul Auster. The study of this problem expands our knowledge of various views on posthumous life reflected in contemporary fiction and allows us to identify the diversity of linguistic and artistic means of authors’ mythmaking in postmodernist works. The wide representation of the theme of the afterlife in literature and art of the late 20th – early 21st centuries, as well as its insufficient study make this research topical. The analysis reveals that P. Auster, being a postmodernist mythmaker, deconstructs the myth of the afterlife, creates his own mythologem, nominates it, playing with its meanings, sets an ironic mode of its perception. In the article the method of cognitive analysis is used to identify the conceptual features of the notion of the afterlife and the features of its nominative field; the method of mythological analysis helps to disclose the peculiarities of the transformation of traditional Christian ideas about the next world. The article reveals the features of the writer’s mythmaking and highlights the originality of the author’s narrative.