Myth and Fairy Tale in the Story by V. P. Astafyev “The Boy in the White Shirt”

The article examines folklore and mythopoetic principles of depiction in V. P. Astafyev’s story “The Boy in the White Shirt” (from the cycle “The Last Tribute”). An analysis of the poetics of the work reveals a number of iconic and symbolic images, hidden metaphors that generate an internal narrative code at the subtext level associated with myth and fairy tale as different modes of folk culture. Special plot functions in the story are performed by a set of motifs that reveal parallels with the fairy tale “Geese-Swans”: the absence of parents, violation of a ban, the unexpected irrational disappearance of a child and his departure to the “other world,” the search by the mother/sister, the transition from the world of the living to the world of the dead. The figurative and semantic codes of the archaic (pagan) myth and the folk-Christian tradition (Christian myth) are actualized in the artistic system of Astafyev’s story to the same degree as the structural elements of a fairy tale. Elements of the mythological model of the world, including the mythologem of the path, the chronotope of the border, the archetypal image of the Mother of the Raw Earth, etc, are revealed within the spatio-temporal framework of the work. The key plot event of the story — the irrational tragic death of an innocent child — can be existentially and spiritually interpreted at the deep levels of folk culture, reflected in folklore and myth.