26 terms
Fable
The fable is a short allegorical work of didactic content, mostly in verse, in which the characters are animals, plants, or objects embodying human traits and vices; the fable ends with a moral — a concise formulation of its conclusion. The genre reaches back to the semi-legendary ancient Greek Aesop, and its classic verse form was given by Jean de La Fontaine in France and Ivan Krylov. In Ukrainian literature the fable was developed by Hryhorii Skovoroda (the prose Kharkiv Fables), Petro Hulak-Artemovsky, Yevhen Hrebinka (The Bear's Court, The Fisherman), and especially by Leonid Hlibov, whose fables (The Pike; The Wolf and the Lamb; The Swan, the Pike and the Crayfish) became classroom classics, still relevant for their satire of injustice and social vice.
Fabula
Fabula is the totality of a work's events in their natural, chronological, and causal sequence — that is, 'what actually happened', as opposed to plot, the artistically recomposed manner of presenting those events. The distinction between fabula and plot was introduced by theorists (in particular the Formalists) to describe how a writer creatively organizes event-material: rearranging episodes, applying retrospection, delaying or anticipating the narration. For example, a detective work often begins with a consequence (the discovery of a crime), while the fabula's beginning (the crime itself) is reconstructed only at the end. The divergence between fabula and plot is an important means of artistic expressiveness: it creates intrigue, tension, and the effect of surprise. A complex plot-fabula organization marks, in particular, modernist works with their shifts of temporal planes, such as the prose of Valerii Shevchuk or the world novels of the 'stream of consciousness'.
Fairy Tale
The fairy tale is an epic genre of oral folk creativity and literature, a narrative of invented, fantastic events in which magical forces and helper-animals act and good invariably triumphs over evil. The folk tale is divided into magic tales, tales of everyday life, and animal tales; it has an established composition (the opening 'once upon a time', threefold repetitions, a happy resolution) and expresses the people's moral ideal. From the folkloric tale descends the literary (authorial) fairy tale developed by Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, and Charles Perrault. In the Ukrainian tradition, fairy tales were collected and reworked by Ivan Franko (When the Animals Could Still Talk), Marko Vovchok, and Lesia Ukrainka; a philosophical authorial tale was created by Lesia Ukrainka in the drama-fairy-play The Forest Song, which draws on Volhynian mythology.
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fantastic literature that creates a coherent invented world in which magic, mythological creatures, and supernatural forces operate, their existence requiring no scientific explanation but resting on its own internal logic and a folkloric-mythological tradition. Unlike science fiction, fantasy appeals not to reason but to imagination and archetypes. The classic canon was established by J. R. R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings), drawing on Germanic-Scandinavian mythology; the genre was developed by Ursula K. Le Guin and C. S. Lewis. Ukrainian fantasy draws actively on Slavic mythology and folklore: it was taken up by Maryna and Serhii Diachenko, Volodymyr Areniev, and Dara Kornii, while the sources of its imagery reach back to the demonological motifs of Mykola Hohol (Gogol) and the folk tales collected by Ivan Franko.
Farce
Farce is a comic dramatic genre of a light, entertaining character, built on external comedy, buffoonery, sharp situations, misunderstandings, disguises, and exaggerations; its aim is to provoke laughter rather than deep reflection. Farce descends from the medieval interludes that were inserted ('farcir' — to stuff) into serious religious performances; it later became an independent genre of folk theater. In farce conventional comic mask-types act, and a dynamic, often coarse action prevails. Elements of farce were masterfully used by Molière in his comedies. In the Ukrainian tradition the farcical element nourished the folk theater, the comic part of the vertep, and the interludes to the school drama of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where everyday types were ridiculed in comic scenes. Farcical grotesque is also present in modern comedy writing.
Feminine rhyme
Feminine rhyme is a rhyme with the stress on the penultimate syllable, when one unstressed syllable follows the stressed one (for example, "flower — bower"). Its clausula is disyllabic, and therefore feminine rhyme sounds softer, more melodious and smoother than masculine rhyme, bringing the verse closer to a song-like intonation. Feminine rhymes are typical of Ukrainian folk and literary song; they are often alternated with masculine ones, creating an ordered rhythmic pattern of the stanza. The type of rhyme is determined by the structure of the clausula: the presence of one unstressed syllable after the stress makes the rhyme feminine. Combined with the appropriate metres, feminine rhyme reinforces the lyrical, elegiac or lullaby tonality of the verse.
Feminist Criticism
Feminist criticism is a movement in literary studies that examines literature through the prism of gender: it exposes patriarchal stereotypes in the depiction of women, revises the canon, recovers forgotten women's names, and analyzes the specificity of 'women's writing.' Its classic works are Simone de Beauvoir's 'The Second Sex' (1949), Virginia Woolf's 'A Room of One's Own,' Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's 'The Madwoman in the Attic,' and Kate Millett's 'Sexual Politics.' The French branch (Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous with the concept of écriture féminine, Luce Irigaray) joined feminism with psychoanalysis and poststructuralism. Feminist criticism grew into broader gender and queer studies. In Ukrainian literary studies it is developed by Solomiia Pavlychko ('The Discourse of Modernism in Ukrainian Literature,' 1997), Vira Aheieva, and Tamara Hundorova, reconsidering the work of Lesia Ukrainka and Olha Kobylianska.
Feuilleton
The feuilleton is an artistic-publicistic genre — a short newspaper or magazine work of topical content, in which a current social problem is treated satirically or humorously, using artistic means: imagery, irony, and wit. The feuilleton combines the promptness of journalism with the artistry of literature; it exposes social vices, bureaucratism, and hypocrisy. The genre took shape in the French press of the nineteenth century. In Ukrainian literature a master of satirical short prose was Ostap Vyshnia, whose 'smiles' (humorous-satirical miniatures close to the feuilleton) won nationwide love; working in this genre were also Volodymyr Samiilenko and, later, the authors of the satirical magazine Perets (Pepper). Feuilletonic sharpness and publicistic pathos are also characteristic of modern essay writing that responds to painful social questions.
First Printing (Editio Princeps)
A first printing (Latin editio princeps) is the first printed edition of a certain work and, in a broader sense, the oldest printed book of a certain people, language, or printing house. First printings have exceptional historical-cultural and bibliographic value. The beginning of Cyrillic printing was laid by Schweipolt Fiol, who in 1491 in Kraków printed the first Cyrillic books (the 'Oktoikh,' the 'Chasoslovets'). The first printer in Ukraine was Ivan Fedorovych (Fedorov), who in 1574 in Lviv published the 'Apostol' — the first precisely dated printed book on Ukrainian lands — as well as the first East Slavic printed 'Primer.' The most outstanding monument of Ukrainian printing of the 16th century is the Ostroh Bible of 1581, the first complete printed edition of the Bible in Church Slavonic, carried out through the efforts of Prince Kostiantyn of Ostroh. First printings and the early printed book are studied by bibliology and paleotypy; these monuments are the ornament of national book collections.
Fixed Epithet
The fixed (permanent) epithet is a traditional descriptor, established in folk creativity, that invariably accompanies a certain word regardless of context: 'the blue sea,' 'the boisterous wind,' 'the open field,' 'brown eyes,' 'the red kalyna,' 'fine tears.' The fixed epithet is a characteristic feature of folklore style, an element of folk-poetic formulaicity that facilitates oral composition and memorization. Unlike an individual authorial epithet, which each time discloses a new quality of an object, the fixed epithet consolidates an established, idealized notion of it. The nature of the folk-poetic epithet was thoroughly studied by Alexander Veselovsky in his work 'From the History of the Epithet.' The fixed epithet was actively adopted by Romantic and neo-Romantic literature: it echoes in Taras Shevchenko's 'Kobzar' and in Lesia Ukrainka's poetry, lending them a folk-song resonance.
