LITERARY STUDIES OF THANATOLOGY MOTIVES IN UKRAINIAN PROSE OF THE 19TH – 20TH CENTURIES

Abstract

One of the current directions of development of modern literary science is the study of thanatological themes reflected in various genres of modern fiction and previous stages of its historical development. In Ukrainian literary studies, the corresponding studies are still in their initial phase, although since the end of the 20th – beginning of the 20th century. their number, as well as the thematic range of vectors of thanatological interests, begins to grow rapidly. However, in general, thanatological issues reflected in the prose works of Ukrainian writers still remain insufficiently studied and require further research searches.This is where we see the relevance of our study, the purpose of which is to analyze and systematize the issues of theoretical understanding and terminological definition of thanatological issues in the works of Ukrainian literary scholars.The tasks of our investigation are the characteristics of literary studies of thanatological motifs in Ukrainian prose of the 19th - 20th centuries. As a result of the conducted research, it was established that: 1) in Ukrainian literary thought, thanatological issues begin to be actively studied starting from the end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st century; 2) a significant part of literary thanatological studies concerns works of Ukrainian prose of the turn of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century. (works by I. Franko, V. Stefanyk, Mark Cheremshyna, Yu. Fedkovych, etc.); 3) among the studies devoted to the thanatological issues of Ukrainian prose of the first half of the 20th century. an important place is occupied by both articles of a generalized-analytical nature that consider the ideology of death reflected in them in general, and investigations that concern individual literary personalities (V. Vynnychenko, M. Khvylovy, Yu. Yanovsky, V. Pidmohylny, B. Antonenko-Davydovych, etc.); 4) in similar studies of Ukrainian prose of the second half of the 20th - beginning of the 21st century. the thanatological semantics of the works of Gr. Tyutyunnyk, V. Kysil, M. Matios, S. Zhadan, E. Pashkovsky, etc. have been investigated; 5) the most productive areas of thanatological research in Ukrainian prose of the late 19th – early 20th centuries are the issues of the relationship between eros and thanatos, suicidal motifs, genre and literary-regional features, such as the Hutsul text or emigration prose.