Language Representation of Myth-making as a Method of Artistic Cognition (Based on the British Postmodern Poetry)

The article is devoted to the issue of myth-making in postmodern literature. A new mythology is regarded as a philosophical and literary phenomenon, and is also analyzed from the point of view of cognitive linguistics. The main sources of mythology and trends in myth-making in modern fiction are also defined. The purpose of the study is to identify linguistic ways of representing myth-making as an innovative cognitive practice of British postmodern poets. Modern myth-making is a complex philosophical phenomenon that becomes a source of pseudo-reality and at the same time constantly refers to other myths and images, reinterpreting them. Myth turns into a system of narratives and belongs exclusively to the space of language. From the point of view of linguistics, myth is a complex linguistic sign that regulates human life on an unconscious level and connects culture and language with each other. Modern myth-making of the postmodern era is becoming a way of artistic cognition, creating new meanings by comparing various mythological systems. This cognitive practice is necessary to understand the new reality, which is chaotic, interactive, singular and unpredictable. Writers of the postmodern era most often turn to cosmogonic mythology, creating their own unique mythological systems constructed from the elements of already existing myths. At the same time, postmodern mythology is represented in a unique language. A study of the British lyrics showed that the linguistic ways of expressing myth are very diverse and differ from writer to writer. In addition, different British poets take the myths from various cultures as the basis for their own mythologies, turning to ancient Greek, Celtic, Indian and other eschatologies. Through linguistic, interpretative, grammatical, phonetic, and contextual analyses of a literary text the following language ways of the modern myth manifestation are identified: historical, cultural, geographical, mythological, fairy-tale allusion; intertextual metaphor; allusion flow; stylization represented by phonetic, lexical and syntactic imitation of intertext; personification of nature forces; myth destruction; interaction with the reader. It has been shown that linguistic means interact with one another in lyrical texts, creating an author’s new mythology that reveals unique artistic meanings.