Female Projection in the Mythopoetics of Death as Reflected in Celtic Mythical Stories, Folktales and Late Medieval Literature

The thesis aims to explore female projection in the mythopoetics of death as reflected in Celtic mythical stories, folktales and late medieval literature. The work relies on the semiotic ideas of A. J. Greimas and J. Lotman regarding the principles of cultural text construction and peculiarities of different narrative genres. The research confirms that the figure of the goddess takes the central role in the Celtic mythopoetics of death. It correlates with the figures of the bird, the horse, the male and the spirit and thus creates various configurations. Implied (functional) isomorphism, direct metamorphosis (absolute isomorphism), comparison, direct indication of the mythical elements are discovered in the mythical stories. Here, the level of the supernatural is relatively high. Folklore tradition retained many mythical schemes concerning both figurative and thematic levels. Some of them are transferred almost without alteration. However, there is a clear tendency to widen the figurative set. In late Medieval literature, the supernatural dimension is replaced by the social one, some mythical categories are extinct. The figurative level seems to be preserved without great deviations from the mythical sources, yet on the thematic level, the invasion of Christian values is observed. Some Celtic models of mythopoetics of death (goddess-horse, external soul, madness mythemes) found in various narrative discourses resisted the influence of different socio-cultural environment