MEMORY, HISTORICAL PROSE AND FORMATION OF NATIONAL IDENTITY

Abstract

Historical prose as a component of national literature is an essential part of the cultural life of modern nations. One of its tasks is to form the cultural memory of large groups that create national communities, structure the past and preserve its integrity and uniqueness.
 The historical prose of Ukrainian emigration eloquently demonstrates mutual projections of memory and the formation of national conscience and identity. The prose of emigration as an exile can serve as a relief and expressive evidence of the formation and interpenetration of the main ideas and concepts, ideological and aesthetic figurative paradigm, formed on the border of memory, history, and literature. This is how historical prose is seen as a purposeful policy of memory.
 For societies where the state tradition was interrupted, historical prose can be considered an important factor in restoring/maintaining national memory, as well as a means of creating national myths, projecting the past on the modern problems of a stateless nation, and preserving the national traditions.
 Historical prose of Ukrainian emigration had these tasks in mind, taking responsibility for the national philosophical perspective rooted in the past in order to preserve and increase it in the future. The idea of self-discovery through one’s own history is, in particular, an important element in the existence of Ukrainian emigration: in this case, we talk about national self-knowledge in a community that tries to preserve its national identity and fix it not only in oral tradition but also in scholarly historical research and historical prose.
 Historical fiction of the 20th-century Ukrainian emigration was a means of discovering the sources of traditions in the past that directly influences modernity, and an attempt to build a historiosophical literary model that would reveal the forgotten past, show the causes of current problems, and point out the way to future.