25 terms
La Pléiade
La Pléiade is a circle of seven French poets of the Renaissance (mid-sixteenth century) united by a program for the renewal of the national poetry on the basis of imitating ancient and Italian models. Its leading figures were Pierre de Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay, author of the manifesto The Defence and Illustration of the French Language (1549), which proclaimed the vernacular's right to high poetry on a par with Latin. La Pléiade enriched French lyric with the forms of the sonnet, ode, and elegy, developed a theory of poetic language, and affirmed the figure of the poet-creator. The activity of La Pléiade had a pan-European significance as a model of the conscious creation of a high-style national literature on the basis of the native tongue — a process consonant with the later efforts of many peoples, the Ukrainian among them, to affirm the full-fledged standing of their language in letters.
Lament (Holosinnia)
Holosinnia is an improvisational funeral lament, one of the most archaic genres of ritual folklore, expressing grief for the deceased. It was performed mainly by a woman (mother, widow, daughter) or by a specially invited mourner; the text combined rhetorical addresses to the dead, reproaches to fate, praise of the departed's virtues, and a portrayal of the family's sorrow. The style of laments is marked by exclamations, repetitions, parallelisms, and a characteristic chanting intonation. Besides funeral laments, there were recruit and wedding laments (as a farewell to maidenhood). A classic collection is Volodymyr Hnatiuk's 'Funeral Laments' (1912); they were also studied by Ilarion Svientsitsky. The poetics of laments were studied by Olha Franko, and their influence is felt in the folk-song laments of Shevchenko's 'Kobzar.'
Language play
Language play is the deliberate, creative violation or playing-upon of linguistic norms, meanings and forms for the sake of a comic, aesthetic or intellectual effect. Language play rests on the use of polysemy, homonymy, paronymy, sound coincidences, unexpected word-formation, the destruction of phraseological units and other resources of language that activate attention to the linguistic material itself. It is characteristic of the pun, the witticism, the riddle, children's creativity, and especially of literature oriented toward experiment and irony, in particular the avant-garde and Postmodernism. Language play reveals the flexibility, polysemy and creative potential of language, transforming it from a transparent means of communication into an object of aesthetic attention. It is an important category of stylistics, linguopoetics and the theory of the comic, closely linked to the playful nature of artistic creativity.
Lanka (MARS)
'Lanka' (later renamed MARS — the 'Workshop of the Revolutionary Word') is a literary grouping of Kyiv writers that operated in 1924–1929 and united artists who sought creative independence, high craftsmanship, and psychological depth, avoiding both Proletkult mass-ism and direct ideological engagement. To the group belonged Valerian Pidmohylny, Yevhen Pluzhnyk, Borys Antonenko-Davydovych, Hryhorii Kosynka, Todos Osmachka, and Mariia Halych. 'Lanka' was the Kyiv counterpart of the Kharkiv VAPLITE and likewise defended the quality and European level of Ukrainian prose and poetry. The work of its members — the intellectual prose of Pidmohylny, the philosophical lyric of Pluzhnyk, the expressive novellas of Kosynka — belongs to the summits of the era. Most members of the grouping were killed in the era of the Stalinist repressions of the Executed Renaissance.
Legend
A legend is a folklore prose work of fantastic or religious-didactic content that narrator and listener treat as plausibly true, unlike a tale. There are cosmogonic legends (about the creation of the world, mountains, rivers), etiological ones (explaining the origin of phenomena), biblical-apocryphal, and historical-heroic legends. A legend inclines toward explanation and moralizing and is often tied to a specific place or saint. In the Ukrainian tradition, legends about the founding of Kyiv, about Saints Anthony and Theodosius of the Caves, and about the opryshky and Oleksa Dovbush are widespread. Legends were collected and systematized by Volodymyr Hnatiuk ('Galician-Ruthenian Folk Legends,' 1902–1903) and Vasyl Myloradovych. Literary life was given to the legend by Marko Vovchok and Ivan Franko ('Moses').
Leitmotif
A leitmotif is an image, motif, detail, phrase or theme that recurs throughout a work, acquiring the significance of a leading idea and uniting the text into a semantic whole. The term is borrowed from musicology, where it denoted a musical theme linked to a certain character or idea. In literature the leitmotif, returning in different episodes, emphasises the main experience, the key thought or the through-symbol, creating an inner rhythm and cohesion of the artistic whole. Recurring, it is each time enriched with new semantic shades. The leitmotif is an important means of the compositional and semantic organisation of a work, especially in psychological prose, lyric and the novel. It is closely linked to the motif, the through-image and the symbol and is studied by poetics and literary theory.
Leitmotif Image
A leitmotif image is an image that recurs throughout a work (or a cycle, or an author's entire oeuvre), acquiring a symbolic generalizing meaning and binding the artistic whole. The leitmotif image is akin to the concept of the leitmotif (from music) — a recurring motif that accompanies a certain theme, personage, or idea. Passing through the text, such an image gradually accrues meaning, gathers associations, and becomes a key to understanding the author's design. Leitmotif images include the garden, the road, the home, and the cherry orchard in literature; the image of the steppe in the Ukrainian tradition. Thus the leitmotif image of the kalyna symbolizes Ukraine, a maiden's beauty, and the memory of the lineage; the image of the word-as-weapon runs through the entire work of Taras Shevchenko and Lesia Ukrainka. The leitmotif image of the Dnipro unites the space of the 'Kobzar.'
Linguistic colouring
Linguistic colouring is the aggregate of linguistic means that lend a work a specific tinge — national, historical, local, social or professional — reproducing the distinctiveness of the depicted milieu. National colouring is created by the use of ethnographic vocabulary, folk formulas, characteristic imagery; historical colouring by archaisms and historicisms; local colouring by dialectisms; social colouring by jargon and vernacular. Linguistic colouring immerses the reader in the atmosphere of the depicted world, lends the narrative verisimilitude, concreteness and convincingness. The skilful reproduction of colouring is a mark of a writer's mastery, and its preservation is one of the most difficult tasks of literary translation. Linguistic colouring is studied by stylistics and cultural linguistics in the aspect of the interaction of language, culture and the artistic depiction of reality.
Lirnyk
The lirnyk was a Ukrainian wandering folk singer who performed religious psalms, kanty, dumas, and historical and humorous songs to the accompaniment of the lira (hurdy-gurdy). Like the kobzars, the lirnyks were mostly blind, gathered in guilds with their own statute and secret argot, and had their own master 'fathers' and apprentice guides. Unlike the kobzar repertoire with its pronounced heroic component, the lirnyk's inclined toward religious-didactic and moral works. The lirnyk tradition was studied by Porfyrii Martynovych and Klyment Kvitka. The Soviet repressions of the 1930s severed the living lirnyk tradition. The figure of the blind lirnyk became a symbol of folk wisdom and national memory in literature — notably in Taras Shevchenko's poem 'The Blind Man (The Captive)' and in the work of Panteleimon Kulish.
Literary Canon
The literary canon is the body of works that a given culture recognizes as exemplary, classic, worthy of study, preservation, and transmission to subsequent generations. The canon is formed through school curricula, anthologies, literary criticism, academic institutions, and literary histories. It is not immutable: the canon is constantly revised, expanded, and contested — a process called the 'canon wars.' Postcolonial, feminist, and cultural criticism expose the mechanisms of exclusion (of women's writing, 'minor' literatures, marginal voices) from the 'great' canon. Harold Bloom, in 'The Western Canon' (1994), defended the aesthetic autonomy of the canon. The problem of the Ukrainian canon is especially acute owing to the colonial past: its reconsideration (decolonization, the return of the 'Executed Renaissance' and forgotten names) is a key task of contemporary literary studies.
