Myth and the Sacredness of Nature. Notes on the Prose of Alisa Ganieva

The current, unprecedented environmental crisis foregrounds the issue of humankind’s relationship with Nature, a bond that apparently needs to be reassessed on new grounds. In response to this pressing urge, this contribution intends to explore the connection between literature, the use of myth, and the Anthropocene in the prose works of the Russian-Dagestani writer Alisa Arkad’evna Ganieva, born in Moscow to an Avar family but raised between Gunib and Makhachkala, Dagestan. Although Nature is not one of the most prominent themes in Ganieva’s novels, her depiction of it in connection to autochthonous mythology makes the literary text an interesting form of negotiation of the uncertainties brought by this age of ecological crisis. The privileged methodological framework used here draws upon shared theories in the field of cognitive narratology and ecocriticism, believing that ‘how reading narrative (or engaging with narrative in other media) may train audiences in the acceptance or embrace of ecological uncertainty as a fundamental dimension of the experience of the present’ (Caracciolo 2022: IX).