Elias Canetti's biography as an example of mythopoesis

Abstract

This article examines the biography of Austrian writer, Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti (1905-1994) as an example of mythopoesis. Special attention is given to bringing to light the terms "autobiographical myth" and "biographical myth", as well as investigating the category of metamorphosis, which makes it possible to reconstruct the writer's protean personality type and reveal a number of characteristics of his poetics. On the pages of autobiographical works, wherein most researchers of the writer's oeuvre fully equate the author and the protagonist, Canetti mythologizes his own life. Based on autobiographical myth, biographical myth is born, which anchors in the readership's mass consciousness facts in the writer's life in the form they are presented by the author himself. The biographical myth that existed when Canetti was alive has now entered the demythologization stage. Calling upon new publications on Canetti, as well as the analysis of books by the Austrian writer never published before, enables the author of the article to examine his biography in a new light. © IDOSI Publications, 2014.