21 terms
Tale
The opovidannia (tale) is a small epic prose genre depicting a particular incident or episode from the life of one or several characters; it differs from the short story by a calmer development of action, the absence of an obligatory unexpected turn, and greater attention to everyday life, character, and milieu. The tale strives for lifelike authenticity and the typicality of what is depicted. It is one of the most widespread genres of realist and modern prose. In Ukrainian literature, masters of the tale were Ivan Franko (Little Myron, the Boryslav cycle), Borys Hrinchenko, Panas Myrny, Hryhir Tiutiunnyk (Three Cuckoos with a Bow), and Valerii Shevchuk. In the world tradition the genre is represented by Anton Chekhov, Jack London, Mark Twain, and, in the twentieth century, by Jorge Luis Borges and Raymond Carver.
Tall Tale (Nebylytsia)
The nebylytsia is a genre of humorous folklore — a short work built on deliberate nonsense, illogicality, and the violation of the laws of the real world: a pig builds a nest in an oak, an ox lays eggs, a legless man runs, and an armless one plays. The comic effect of the tall tale arises from the obvious divergence between what is said and what is possible; it is a kind of 'poetics in reverse.' Nebylytsias may be children's (in the form of amusements and rhymes) or adult (within humorous and satirical songs and the vertep drama). The genre is akin to the European 'brave lies' and the carnival laughter culture described by Mikhail Bakhtin. Ukrainian nebylytsias are recorded in the collections of Volodymyr Hnatiuk. The illogical poetics of the tall tale nourished absurdist devices in the poetry of Vasyl Symonenko.
Tautology
Tautology is the repetition of the same or a cognate word within an utterance. As a linguistic error, tautology testifies to carelessness of style ("butter-buttery"); yet as a deliberate artistic device it becomes a means of reinforcement, intensification or rhythmic organisation of speech. In folklore tautological phrases ("to think a thought," "to shout a shout," "early-early in the morning" — literal translations of the Ukrainian «думу думати», «криком кричати», «рано-вранці») lend a folk-poetic colouring, melodiousness and intonational fullness. Artistic tautology emphasises a key concept, slows the tempo, creates an impression of thoroughness or emotional insistence. It is often distinguished from pleonasm, where redundancy arises through words close in meaning but of different roots, though the boundary between these concepts is drawn inconsistently in linguistics. Tautology is a subtle stylistic device whose effectiveness depends on artistic motivation.
Term
A term is a word or word-combination that precisely and unambiguously designates a scientific, technical or professional concept within a certain field of knowledge. Unlike a common word, a term is devoid of emotional-expressive colouring, polysemy and imagery; it strives for definitional clarity and systematic correlation with other terms of the field. The aggregate of the terms of a particular science forms its terminology. In literature terms are used for the faithful reproduction of a professional milieu or scientific atmosphere or, conversely, for the creation of a comic effect in an unusual context. Terminology studies investigates the regularities of the formation, functioning and ordering of terms; the development of Ukrainian scientific terminology is an important component of the formation of the literary language and national culture.
Terza rima
Terza rima is a chain stanzaic form of tercets linked by a continuous "interlocking" rhyme according to the scheme aba bcb cdc…, where the middle line of each stanza sets the rhyme for the outer lines of the next. The chain concludes with a separate line rhyming with the middle line of the last tercet. Terza rima was created by Dante Alighieri for the "Divine Comedy," and since then it has become a symbol of majestic, continuously flowing epic-philosophical speech. The difficulty of the form lies in the constant "overflowing" of rhyme from stanza to stanza, which demands virtuoso versification technique. In Ukrainian poetry terza rima was mastered by translators and by authors of philosophical lyric oriented toward the high classical tradition.
Textology (Textual Criticism)
Textology (textual criticism) is a philological science that studies the history of a work's text, its sources, redactions, and variants, with the aim of establishing the authentic, canonical text and its scholarly edition. Textology investigates authorial manuscripts (autographs, drafts), editions published during and after the author's lifetime, transcripts and copies, tracing the creative history of the text and detecting distortions introduced by copyists, editors, or censorship. Its main tasks are attribution, dating, the establishment of the base text (the author's 'final creative will'), and the compiling of commentary. One distinguishes the textology of modern literature and that of early monuments (medieval), which often uses the genealogical method of reconstructing the protograph (the method of Karl Lachmann). The foundations of Soviet textology were laid by Boris Tomashevsky and Dmitry Likhachov. The Ukrainian textological school (the Shevchenko Institute of Literature) prepares academic complete editions of the classics, freeing texts from censorship and ideological distortions.
The Double
The double is an artistic image that is a personage's 'second self,' their mirror reflection, alter ego, or the embodiment of a repressed, hidden part of the personality. The motif of doubling (the double) reveals the inner split of a person, the struggle of opposing principles within the soul, and the problem of identity. It flourished in the literature of Romanticism (E. T. A. Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe's 'William Wilson') and became pervasive in the prose of Fyodor Dostoevsky (the novella 'The Double'). Psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud's essay 'The Uncanny') and Jungianism (the archetype of the Shadow) gave doubling a deep psychological interpretation. Classic embodiments are Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' and Oscar Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray.' In Ukrainian literature, the motif of the double and the divided consciousness is vividly developed in the novellas of Mykola Khvylovy ('I (A Romance)').
The Enlightenment
The Enlightenment is a broad ideological and cultural movement of the eighteenth century that proclaimed faith in reason, science, education, and social progress as means of perfecting the human being and society, and the struggle against superstition, despotism, and estate privileges. The literature of the Enlightenment had a markedly didactic, publicistic character, combining artistry with philosophy and criticism. It is represented by Voltaire, Denis Diderot, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in France, by Gotthold Lessing and the young Goethe in Germany, and by Jonathan Swift (Ireland) and Daniel Defoe (England). In Ukrainian culture, Enlightenment ideas were embodied by the philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda with his teaching on self-knowledge, 'kindred labor', and moral perfection; the Enlightenment pathos of education and of affirming human dignity also nourished early modern Ukrainian literature — the work of Ivan Kotliarevsky and Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko.
The Sixtiers
The Sixtiers are a generation of Ukrainian writers, artists, and public figures who came into literature at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, in the era of the Khrushchev 'thaw', and inaugurated a spiritual and national-cultural revival after decades of Stalinist terror. The Sixtiers returned to literature sincerity, individuality, aesthetic freedom, and attention to national memory, language, and human dignity, opposing official Socialist Realism. Their leading figures are the poets Lina Kostenko, Vasyl Symonenko, Ivan Drach, Mykola Vinhranovsky, Dmytro Pavlychko, and Vasyl Stus, and the critics Ivan Dziuba, Ivan Svitlychny, and Yevhen Sverstiuk. Many of the Sixtiers became dissidents and suffered persecution, imprisonment, and exile; Vasyl Stus died in a labor camp in 1985. The movement of the Sixtiers was of decisive significance for the preservation and renewal of Ukrainian culture in the second half of the twentieth century.
Theatre of the Absurd
The Theatre of the Absurd (absurdist drama) is a movement in European dramaturgy of the 1950s and 1960s that depicted the meaninglessness and irrationality of human existence in a hostile, incomprehensible world through the destruction of the traditional dramatic form: the disintegration of plot, logic, character, and language, repetitiveness, the illogicality of dialogue, and grotesque. The absurdists showed the impossibility of genuine communication and the solitude of the human being. The term was introduced by the critic Martin Esslin. Classic examples are Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Eugène Ionesco's The Bald Soprano and Rhinoceros. In Ukrainian literature elements of absurdist poetics — illogicality, grotesque, the deformation of language to convey the tragedy of being — are present in experimental dramaturgy and are reinterpreted in modern Ukrainian plays and prose that assimilated the European experience and applied it to reflection on the totalitarian and post-totalitarian experience.
