UKRAINIAN EMIGRATION LITERATURE AS A HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL PHENOMENON: PROBLEMS, DIRECTIONS AND PERSPECTIVES OF RESEARCH

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the main problems, directions and prospects of the study of Ukrainian emigration literature of the 20th century. In particular it studies the history of its research as a separate scientific problem, analyzes the main directions of its research, and marks the most important scientific achievements in its development. Based on the analysis of the works of Ukrainian literary scholars and critics – both emigration and mainland – devoted to the problem of studying emigration literature (historical-literature, theoretical, methodological), some comments are made about the peculiarities of its development, difference from others – diaspora, expatriate, as well as the relationship of these closely related but not identical concepts. The article analyzes features that internally unite emigration and mainland literary processes, as well as their differences and moments of interactions, it emphasizes the complexity and inconsistency of this interaction. An opinion is expressed on the opportunity to consider the relation between mainland and emigration literatures as a metropolis and the periphery and, at the same time, peculiar cultural monopolies. One aspect of the study concerns the issue of the discontinuity and functioning of emigration literature as developing not because of the change of generation, as mainland literature, but through "waves" that influence its external contours and internal movement. The article notes the significance of historical, cultural, moral and aesthetic experience, which Ukrainian emigration literature brought to history and the canon of national literature, expanding them ideologically, genre and thematically. The paper substantiates the importance of the theoretical and historical-literature conceptualization of Ukrainian emigration literature of the 20th century, the need for an integral scientific approach, which would become the theoretical basis for future research.