The Mythmaking Structure of Levon Khechoyan’s Epic Narrative “King Arshak, Eunuch Drastamat”

Key words: mythologization, historical novel, structuralism, ornamental prose, mythological worldview, historical thinking From the perspective of structural features and the construction of a myth-making narrative, Levon Khechoyan’s historical novel “King Arshak, Eunuch Drastamat”, published in 1995 on the eve of the 21st century, stands out in modern Armenian prose. Literary scholars who have studied this novel have emphasized its mythological character and myth-like structure. However, the epic narrative of the novel has yet to undergo structural analysis. Furthermore, no comprehensive study of the structure of myth-making narratives has been conducted in Armenian literature, which makes a structural examination of the epic narrative in L. Khechoyan’s “King Arshak, Eunuch Drastamat” particularly relevant in this context. The subject of this article is the structure of the epic narrative in L. Khechoyan’s novel. The aim of the paper is to explore the features of the myth-like structure in the text. To achieve this goal, the following tasks were set: to analyze the structure of the myth-making narrative and its epic elements. The scientific novelty of this article lies in the structural study of the myth-making epic narrative in “King Arshak, Eunuch Drastamat” by L. Khechoyan, as well as in identifying its structural characteristics.