Myth and History in Committed Writing

To what extent may ideological engagement put in a certain perspective define, discredit, or enrich writing of a given author? The present research explores the ways of personal being political and poetical in the two different worlds-the hegemony in its guilt and decay and the periphery, which didn-t wait too long to become the new center. We focuse on the figure of Franz Werfel and his body of work in order to explore the ways reality and realness are transformed through history, myth, politics, and poetics. As Werfel-s fiction is analyzed in terms of historicism and remythologization in committed writing, his texts are placed side by side with those by the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa. By doing so, we make an attempt to track the process of myth-making and self-mythologizing in politically committed and ideologically fluid authors native to very different cultural paradigms of the twentieth century. Conducted in English, German, Spanish, and French, written in English and translated into Russian and Ukrainian to be further developed internationally in regard to PhD dissertation, this research may prove a humble contribution to the vast field of comparative studies.

Karina Sembe, MA. Studied Literature and Romance Languages at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and Comparative Literature at The University of Vienna.Key Research Areas: Archetypal and Myth Criticism, Latin American Studies, Literature and Politics, Postcolonial Studies.