Artistic and aesthetic features of the image of the province in modern Ukrainian literature

Abstract

This study deals with the features of the description of the Province topos in modern Ukrainian prose and the problems of the development of the ideas of geopoetics in Ukrainian literary studies. The subject of the study is the poetic and stylistic parameters of the Province topos in modern Ukrainian prose. Elzhbieta Rybitska’s ideas of structuralism and geopoetics became the intellectual support of this research. The goal is a systematic analysis of the poetic and stylistic parameters of the topos of the Province in the novels “The Servant from Dobromil”, “Enchanted Musicians”, “The Tycoon”, by Halyna Pahutiak, “Voroshilovgrad” by Serhiy Zhadan, and “District D” by Artem Chekh. A combination of structural-typological analysis and conceptual analysis methods in the context of the ideas of geopoetics was chosen for this research. The scientific novelty of the study is determined by the fact that it describes three models of understanding the topos of the Province in modern Ukrainian literature, proposes and argues for an aesthetic paradigm of modeling the world and man in the prose works of modern Ukrainian writers in the context of the ideas of structuralism and geopoetics.

The study’s results present three models of the topos of the Province. Within the first model, the Province is described as a geographical space in which the opposition of the Center / Province is revealed. The second model is based on myth as a sacred space in which the aggressive Center and the Arcadian and harmonious Province are opposed. The third model is based on post-colonial ideas of the contradiction between colonized cultures and regions, describing the dialogue with the colonial past and images of Own / Strangers. Such theoretical ideas of this article made it possible to analyze the novels by Halyna Pahutiak, “The Servant from Dobromil”, “Enchanted Musicians”, “The Tycoon”, Serhiy Zhadan’s “Voroshilovgrad”, Artem Chekh’s “District D” and describe the features of depicting the topos of the Province in the works of modern Ukrainian writers. Thus, in the novels by Halyna Pahutiak, the topos of the Province are reproduced as a mystical space with symbolic ambivalent images. In this place, the character gets an opportunity for self-discovery and rethinking ethical views. Instead, Serhiy Zhadan’s novel presents the topos of the Province as a space deformed by the Soviet past, a kind of semantic wasteland, abandoned and hostile to the character. In the novel by Artem Chekh, the model of the topos of the Province is embodied as an existential trap from which the character seeks to escape and simultaneously feels both his own and a stranger.

The study results prove the productivity of geopoetics for modern Ukrainian literary studies, the perspective of the study of the topos of the Province in particular, and the poetic features of geographical images in artistic works in general.