UNIVERSAL COMPONENTS OF SYMBOLIC IMAGERY IN NARRATIVE OF UKRAINIAN AND ENGLISH FAIRY TALES

Abstract

Introduction. The paper focuses on the study of fairy-tale narrative with special interest to the universal components of the folk tale symbolic imagery. Semiotic (symbolic) facet in the Ukrainian and English fairy-tales’ narrative analysis contributes to further investigations in
the field of linguosemiotic, linguocultural, literary-semiotic and other cross-disciplinary studies.

Purpose. The paper aims at revealing of common archetypes or prototypes of the symbolic images and motifs in Ukrainian and English fairy tales.
To achieve this purpose we have applied the integrative methodology based on methods of contextual interpretation analysis, intertextual analysis, elements of the method of comparative analysis of Ukrainian and English fairy tales, as well as elements of the methods of archetypal
and narrative analyses.

The major results refer to the identifying the similar symbolic properties of the Ukrainian and English fairy tales. We have revealed and described the most widespread symbolic images: a symbol of forest as a boundary space between fantastic worlds and, at the same time, a netherworld, associated with the universal motif of initiation; a symbol of tree manifested by
the symbolic images of oak and apple tree acting both as the character’s assistant and mediator between the worlds; an ambivalent symbol of apple involving the archetypal motifs of eternal youth, earthly desires, temptations and transition to another world. Next recurrent motif is thepersonage’s transformation into an animal or a bird, metaphorically manifesting the archetypal idea of ancestors’ reincarnation in totems. The motif of marriage on animals is no less common in tales together with the motive of the totem assistant. Both the bird and the horse belong
to universal mythologems, the former associating with a symbol of the soul and metonymically performing a function of the content of the soul, and the latter acting as an assistant and a mediator between the worlds. The archetypal symbols of fire and water are symbolically reinterpreted
in fairy tales as the border between the worlds, manifestations of the idea of good and evil, symbols of purification as well as in paradigms of ambivalent images appearing as the metonymic
manifestations of the basic symbols.

Conclusion. Constant images of fairy tales symbolize the unity of man with nature, with animals and birds, elements of being. The fairy-tale symbols appear as a system organization, the paradigm of images, with numerous metonymic and metaphorical derivatives from basic symbols, as well as the syntagmatic symbolic links between archetypal symbols and associated
symbolic motifs.