Abstract
The article offers a comparative study of Ukrainian and Polish historical narratives understood as elements of national cultures of remembrance. Using a methodology of cultural studies borrowed from the Birmingham school, the scheme of ‘modes of emplotment’ proposed by Hayden White, the basic model of historical narrative developed by Jerzy Topolski, and Franklin Ankersmit’s notion of narrative substance, a discourse analysis of fragments of four books by contemporary Ukrainian and Polish authors (Yaroslav Hrytsak, Oleksandr Paliy, Grzegorz Motyka, Włodzimierz Mędrzecki) relating the same period (Western Ukraine between the World wars) was accomplished. All layers of the historical narrative (the informational, the persuasive, and the deep world-view related one), as well as modes of emplotment adopted by the authors and their positioning in their narratives were analyzed. The comparative study makes it possible to elucidate the relations between each of the four texts and the mainstream national historic narratives of the two countries. It also helps us to understand the reasons why the attempts to create a single non-conflicted vision of the ‘difficult issues’ of pour shared past have failed so far.
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