B. Teneta's Novel «The Death of Anaguac» and the Problem of Mass Literature of the 1920s and 1930s

Abstract

1. Teneta's Novel «The Death of Anaguac» and the Problem of Mass Literature of the 1920s and 1930s.
   Gramsci considered the texts of mass culture to be an arena for meeting of the ideas imposed on society by the ruling groups and those who oppose them. The problem of the research is to find out the discourses that formed the Ukrainian mass literature of the 1920s and 1930s.

The aim of this work is to demonstrate the co-presence of several discourses in the text of adventure literature of the 1920s and 1930s on the example of B. Teneta's novel «The Death of Anaguac». An effective methodology for analyzing the problem is Marxism, primarily Althusser's symptomatic reading method. Postcolonial studies and a comparative method are used to analyze individual discourses.

As a result of the study, it has been found that the novel «The Death of Anaguac» by B. Teneta embodies the confrontation between Marxism (in the interpretation of history) and the national-protecting narrative (in the fiction plot). The story of the extermination of the Aztecs demonstrates an anti-colonial orientation both in comparison with the novel by the English writer R. Haggard and with the Soviet fiction about the development of the North and the Far East.

The implicit author is convinced of the right of non-European peoples to their own path and original culture. The focalized depiction of the indigenous people's resistance to the invaders in Teneta's novel undermines the civilizational mission of any conquest. At the same time, the hidden theme of the novel is the colonization of Ukraine and a writer’s role in times of crisis. The novelty of the study is associated with the demonstration of the presence of various discourses that form the content of this text.