7 terms
Gender Studies
Gender studies is an interdisciplinary field that studies gender — the sociocultural construct of sex — as opposed to biological sex. In literary studies, gender studies, developing the legacy of feminist criticism, analyzes how texts construct, reinforce, or undermine notions of the 'masculine' and 'feminine' and how gender identity is formed. The theoretical foundation was provided by Judith Butler's 'Gender Trouble' (1990), with its conception of gender as a 'performative' — not an essence but a repeated practice. Gender studies also embraces the study of masculinity and queer theory, which examines nonconforming forms of identity and sexuality (Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, 'Epistemology of the Closet'). The movement is linked to poststructuralism and cultural studies. In Ukrainian literary studies, gender approaches are developed by Vira Aheieva, Tamara Hundorova, and Solomiia Pavlychko, reconsidering the gender aspects of the national literary tradition.
Genology (Genre Theory)
Genology is the branch of literary theory that studies literary kinds, types, and genres: their nature, features, system, historical origin, and evolution. The term was introduced by the scholar Paul van Tieghem. The foundations of the classification of kinds (epic, lyric, drama) were laid by Aristotle and Plato according to the principle of the mode of representation; Georg Hegel gave a philosophical grounding of the triad of kinds. Genology investigates how genre canons are formed, how genres interact, diffuse, and transform, and why some genres fade while others arise. Important contributions to genre theory were made by Mikhail Bakhtin (genre as the 'memory' of literature, the theory of the novel and of speech genres), Northrop Frye, and Tzvetan Todorov. Problems of genology were developed in Ukrainian literary studies by Oleksandr Biletsky; genre transformations are an object of constant attention in contemporary poetics.
Gloss
A gloss (from the Greek glossa — 'tongue, word') is an explanation of an obscure or rarely used word (archaic, foreign, dialectal) in the text of a manuscript or old print, written in the margin (a marginal gloss) or between the lines (an interlinear gloss). Glosses were made by copyists, editors, or readers, interpreting the 'dark' places of a text. Historically, glosses played an important role in the formation of lexicography: gathered together, they formed the first little glossary-dictionaries and, later, explanatory and translation dictionaries. In early Ukrainian and Church Slavonic book culture, glosses often explained Grecisms or archaic words in the living language of the time, so they are a valuable source for the history of the language. The study of glosses helps to reconstruct the level of learning and the linguistic awareness of the bookmen. A special area is glossology; the totality of glosses to a text is called a glossary. Glosses to early monuments were studied by historians of the Ukrainian language.
Gothic Literature
Gothic literature is a current of pre-Romanticism and Romanticism (late 18th–19th century) that cultivated an atmosphere of mystery, horror, and the supernatural, depicting gloomy medieval castles, ruins, ghosts, and fatal passions and crimes. The Gothic appealed to the irrational, to the emotions of fear and sublime horror, opposing them to the rationalism of the Enlightenment. The founder of the genre is considered to be Horace Walpole (The Castle of Otranto); classic examples are Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Gothic poetics — the mysterious, the fantastic, the demonological, the play with fear — echoes in the romantic ballads of Taras Shevchenko (The Bewitched Woman, The Drowned Maiden), in the demonological motifs of the prose of Mykola Hohol (Gogol) (Viy, A Terrible Vengeance), which rest on Ukrainian folk mythology, and in modern mystical prose.
Gothic Novel
The Gothic novel is a variety of the novel that arose in English literature of the second half of the eighteenth century and cultivated an atmosphere of mystery, horror, and the supernatural: the action takes place in gloomy medieval castles, monasteries, and ruins, among ghosts, ancestral curses, and fatal secrets. The Gothic novel appeals to the emotions of fear and the sublime and combines mystery, crime, love, and death. The founder of the genre was Horace Walpole (The Castle of Otranto, 1764); classic examples are Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, Matthew Lewis's The Monk, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The Gothic novel influenced Romanticism and later horror literature. In Ukrainian literature a kindred phenomenon is the mystical-fantastic, demonological prose based on folk beliefs — 'frightful' tales with motifs of the otherworldly — as well as modern Gothic prose that reinterprets the tradition of the mysterious and the eerie on national material.
Gradation
Gradation is a stylistic figure consisting in such an arrangement of words, images or parts of an utterance that each successive element strengthens (climax) or weakens (anticlimax) the semantic or emotional significance of the preceding one. Ascending gradation builds tension, leading the thought to a culmination ("came, saw, conquered"); descending gradation, on the contrary, gradually lowers the intensity. Gradation rests on the quantitative or qualitative increase of a feature and is closely linked to the rhythm and syntactic parallelism of the utterance. It is widely used in oratorical speech, journalism and poetry to create a dynamic unfolding of thought and an emotional effect. Gradation is an important means of the expressive syntax of a literary text.
Grotesque
The grotesque is a type of artistic imagery based on a fantastic, distorted, excessive combination of the incompatible — the real and the fantastic, the terrible and the funny, the high and the low, the living and the mechanical. The grotesque hyperbolizes and deforms reality, violating natural proportions in order to reveal its hidden essence or absurdity. The name derives from the 'grottoes' — antique wall paintings with a bizarre interweaving of plants, animals, and humans. The theory of the grotesque was developed by Wolfgang Kayser (the grotesque as an 'estranged world') and Mikhail Bakhtin (the carnival, renewing 'grotesque realism'). Classic masters of the grotesque are François Rabelais, Jonathan Swift, Nikolai Gogol, and Franz Kafka. In Ukrainian literature, the grotesque is a characteristic means of satire and 'chimerical prose': it is vivid in the drama of Mykola Kulish ('The People's Malakhii') and the prose of Ostap Vyshnia.
