TRANSFORMATION OF MYTHOLOGICAL MOTIFS IN CONTEMPORARY KAZAKHSTANI LITERATURE

O. I. Onufriyuk

2026

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DOI 10.54596/2958-0048-2026-3-366-379
Data confidence 70 medium
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Abstract

The article examines the transformation of mythological motifs in contemporary Kazakhstani literature. The relevance of the study is determined by Kazakhstani writers’ sustained engagement with mythological models as a means of artistic interpretation of historical memory, national identity, and ecological and civilizational crises. The aim of the study is to identify the principal mechanisms through which traditional mythological motifs are transformed in contemporary Kazakhstani prose and to determine their artistic functions. The research material includes works by Abdizhamil Nurpeisov, Aslan Zhaksylykov, and Nikolai Verevochkin, as well as selected texts of contemporary Kazakh prose examined within the context of the national mythological tradition. The methodological framework comprises mythopoetic, comparative-historical, structural-semantic, historical-genetic, and intertextual approaches. The findings demonstrate that mythological motifs in contemporary literature are not reproduced in an unchanged form; rather, they undergo modernization, symbolization, psychologization, historicization, ecologization, intertextualization, and neomythologization. The study establishes that the most productive mythologemes are those of water, earth, stone, the journey, the boundary, death and rebirth, the animal as mediator, and sacred space. An analysis of A. Nurpeisov’s The Last Duty reveals the transformation of the mythological model of disrupted cosmic equilibrium into an ecological myth; A. Zhaksylykov’s Singing Stones demonstrates the psychologization of the motif of transition and the mythologization of inner crisis; while N. Verevochkin’s The Mammoth’s Tooth (Chronicle of a Dead City) reveals the historicization of the end-of-the-world motif and the formation of a myth concerning the disintegration of civilizational space. The study concludes that contemporary Kazakhstani neomythologism constitutes a form of cultural self-reflection that combines the national cultural code with universal mythological models.