THE NOVEL “MARKO THE ACCURSED” BY OLEKSA STOROZHENKO ON THE GOTHIC TRADITION BACKGROUND

Abstract

The article focuses on revealing the Gothic discourse in Oleksa Storozhenko’s novel “Marko the Accursed” and clarifying those features, relating the work of the Ukrainian writer to the world of the Gothic tradition, on the one hand, and distinguishing it from similar ones – on the other, due to the national specificity stipulated by the folklore and mythological background, the title complex explained by the author, the epigraph, the linguistic and stylistic level of the text. It is determined in the paper that the Gothic discourse is implemented in the novel at the level of motifs: family curse, incest, wandering of a lonely hero, escape, chase, fate chasing the main character, as well as images of the underworld. Characters peculiar to the Gothic discourse are revealed in the system of images: first of all, Mark the Accursed who has extraordinary strength and abilities, as well as representatives of the other world, whom he entered into a duel with and turned out to be victorious, unexpectedly for the reader. The unscathed return from hell gives a mystical character to Marko’s journey to the afterlife and confirms the shakiness of the border between the two worlds – of the living beings and the dead, which is typical of the Gothic. It is clarified that the image of death takes on a massive scale in connection with the tyranny and brutality of the Polish nobility on the Ukrainian lands and the resulting rebellion in the Luben region. At the plot level, signs of the Gothic discourse can be observed in the character’s biographical mystery, the mysterious course of events, the depiction of the unexpected situation of the “hero in the dungeon”, the portrayal of the prisoners’ escape from captivity, the gruesome scenes of the massacre of women and children of the Polish nobility and Vovhurivtsi led by Maksym Kryvonos, the open ending of the work, which forces the reader to participate in its co-creation/interpretation by adding a potentially probable ending, which was carried out by an anonymous author.