Prototype

A prototype is a real historical or contemporary person whose life and traits became the basis for creating a literary character. The prototype is only the raw material: in the process of creative transformation, typification, and invention, the writer departs from the concrete prototype, so that the artistic image is not identical with it. The degree of the image's closeness to the prototype varies — from documentary portraiture to a distant impulse for the imagination. The study of prototypes (part of genetic, biographical literary scholarship) helps to understand the creative history of a work but should not replace the analysis of the artistic image with a 'search for the original.' In Ukrainian literature, known prototypes include the historical Pavoloch colonel Ivan Popovych — the model for Ivan Shram in Panteleimon Kulish's novel 'The Black Council'; the semi-legendary poet Marusia Churai — the prototype of the heroine of Lina Kostenko's historical novel in verse.