In the paper the results of the study of naturalism in the works of Stefan Kovaliv are presented. The problem of naturalism in the works of Ukrainian writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries remains poorly studied. Among them is Stefan Kovaliv, a Ukrainian writer and teacher who worked for more than forty years as the head of a large public school in Boryslav and left a creative legacy – stories about life in Boryslav. S. Kovaliv's work took place during the intensive development of the city of Boryslav – a major oil center of Galicia and the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire, whose colony was this Ukrainian territory. S. Kovaliv wrote under the influence of Ivan Franko – the founder of naturalism in the Ukrainian literature. Therefore, it was necessary to study the features of the works of S. Kovaliv in the context of compliance with the stylistic features of naturalism. In his works, the writer portrayed Ukrainians who became victims of the capitalists, who deceitfully took away their peasants' land for oil production. These shocking cases of injustice, as well as the situation of the peasants in Boryslav, became the object of the writer's image. The manifestation of signs of naturalism in the stories «Deserter», «Roit's hole», «Five», «Consequences of feebleness» is analyzed. It is determined that the depicted events are motivated by a social factor, for which the writer used such naturalistic techniques as factography of the image, logging of events with detailed reproduction of their course in time, recording small details, using contrasting scenes to achieve feedback from the reader. These techniques achieve objectivity, close to scientific accuracy, and high plausibility of the image. The figures depicted in the stories have their own individual characteristics due to their origin: gullibility, ignorance, helplessness – inherent mainly in Ukrainian peasants, cunning, use of any situation to their advantage, criminal actions – capitalist entrepreneurs, irresponsibility, indifference – to local officials, whose origin is not defined. Racial characteristics of the heroes of the works are revealed, motivated and intensified mainly in the negative direction under the influence of the social environment at a particular historical moment in Boryslav, at the time of development of the oil industry. On the basis of the conducted analysis the belonging of the writer to naturalists who formed a basis of existence of this literary direction in Ukraine is defined.
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Jan 1, 2020
Kavanamrutbhai Patel 
Open Access
