Ukrainian dramaturgy of the late 19th – early 20th centuries. Female heredity and male tradition

Abstract

The dramatic genre in new Ukrainian literature has almost always been the most conservative. This was due to a number of factors: colonial state and the status of the people geopolitical separation of Ukrainians between two empires, the patriarchal nature of the national world, which must protect itself from external influences, provincialism as a consequence of cultural isolation etc. Since the mid-19th century, Ukrainian theater has performed very important state-building and consolidating functions, in particular, it combined political, educational, and enlightening tasks with purely aesthetic ones. Important progress has been made on the first issue. The second issue was not so successfully resolved. Therefore, it is clear that in the general European process of cultural renewal, the Ukrainian drama remained almost unchanged.

The purpose of the article is to consider the features of the modernization of Ukrainian dramaturgy, which are associated with the active participation of women in the literary process. The article uses the methods of gender studies, comparative literary strategies, the biographical method, and the method of the history of ideas.

The results. The aesthetic crisis of Ukrainian theater became apparent as early as the early 1890s. The crisis was noted not only by young artists, but also by artists of the older generation. In particular, Olena Pchilka noted the then outdated domestic and ethnographic models of both the works themselves and their theatrical productions. Pchilka considered the main factors of development to be the ideological and thematic renewal of the theatrical repertoire (plays from the life of the urban intelligentsia). Also important was the intellectual realization of new material in psychological theater. The work of Lesуa Ukrainka’s daughter, a modernist writer, is a continuation of what was done by Olena Pchilka, her mother, a realist writer. The creative practices of M. Starytsky and his daughter Lyudmila are opposite to this dynastic tandem. Lyudmila Starytska was unable to fully embrace modern art and therefore remained an imitator of her father.

Conclusions. Gender analysis, implemented in comparative terms, proved that women’s courage and determination created the creative strategies and language of the new dramaturgy. It was in modernism that Ukrainian literature achieved the necessary balance of male and female writing.