Scholarly record

MENTALITY AND LITERARY CREATION

T. I. Vasilieva

Abstract

The paper deals with the effect of mentality on literary creation. Dialectic of interrelation between human, national and personal was treated using conventional and modern theories of philosophy (on aesthetics, epistemology, axiology), psychology of creativity, cognitive poetics and cognitive linguistics. The objective of the paper is to determine when and how mentality influences writers' artistic understanding of the reality. Research methods were based on a comparative and historical approach with elements of historical and cultural, hermeneutical and biographical methods. The author analyzed different points of view on the “mentality” definition, its relation with collective and individual consciousness. A general unconscious, intuitive nature of mentality and creation was noted. It was proved that a religious basis of national consciousness had a determining influence on writers' artistic understanding of cultural constants and structuring of the artistic world view. This paper also focuses on a significant influence of ideology, in addition to “collective unconscious”, on writers' artistic understanding of specific cultural constants. It was established that development of mentality and literary creation was interdirectional. The unit of the analysis was a literary concept as a mental formation representing a writer's consciousness in his/her literary work. The comparison of the mentality displayed in works of Russian, European and Japanese writers has revealed religious and ethical characteristics of creation represented in artistic and philosophical concepts of the world and being. The findings contribute to a further development of the theory of mentality, study of identity and interaction of various cultures.

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