THE MONSTER AS A HUMAN IN THE NOVEL “THE MINOTAUR TAKES A CIGARETTE BREAK” BY STEVEN SHERRILL
THE MONSTER AS A HUMAN IN THE NOVEL “THE MINOTAUR TAKES A CIGARETTE BREAK” BY STEVEN SHERRILL

Summary/Abstract: Detection of the amplitude of reinterpretation of legendarymythological structures in the literature of the XXI century is fundamentally important in comparative studies, and the image of the Minotaur is one of the key and understudied here. In the novel “The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break” by S. Sherrill, the image of the main character is a unique example of interpretation, where the emphasis is on the combination of human and animal in the man-bull as on a process. Accordingly, we qualify this novel as philosophical and psychological and highlight the main aspects for study in it for the first time: the peculiarity of the writer’s approach to depicting the symbiosis of culture and nature on the example of the image of the Minotaur, as well as the specificity of the S. Sherrill’s interpretation of the concepts of time, memory and monstrosity in the world of the XXI century. The study of the artistic work against a broad literary background allows us to affirm the organicity of S. Sherrill’s reinterpretation of the Minotaur image in accordance with the trends in the vision of the monstrous in the literature of the end of the XX – the first decades of the XXI century. The man-bull in the text becomes tragically lonely, his guilt as a legendary-historical monster is leveled. It is important that S. Sherrill’s Minotaur loves people, feels like a person, he is aware of the tragedy of civilization’s guilt before nature. In the eyes of the hero, the writer rethinks the current situation in the spiritual sphere, which becomes an area for speculation, as well as the issue of gender.

• Details
• Contents