Information on the thesis

The monograph comprehends the trajectory of the development of Ivan Franko’s
prose – from the first, student attempts and romantic-Gothic novel to the latest,
mostly modernist works of the early twentieth century. The proposed work from
modern research positions comprehends the phenomenon of Franko’s prose as a
holistic occurence in the history of literature, using new research methods and the
latest developments in the fields of methodology and literary criticism (including
studies of Ivan Franko’s activity).
In the work for the first time from the standpoint of axonometry the prose
achievement of the writer is investigated. The works of Ivan Franko are considered in
chronological order (chronologically), also adhering to the aesthetic-stylistic
(romanticism and gothic, naturalism, modernism), character-thematic (works on the
lives of workers, peasants, artisans, burghers, gentry, intellectuals), plot- thematic
(historical, love, pedagogical, self-reflective plots) and genealogical (genre)
principles (novel, story, short story, notice, novella, outline, parable, fairy tale, essay,
fragmentary genres).
The axonometric approach to the analysis of prose heritage makes it possible to
identify the prospects and potential opportunities that a particular work opens for the
writing of subsequent works. Franko’s prose is studied mostly in a linear; attention is
paid to the valence possibilities of one work in relation to another in terms of poetics,
aesthetics and reception. Axonometry makes it possible to clarify the poetic features
of individual works and prose collections, to reveal their ideological-aesthetic and
semantic-formal potential, to identify thematic, genre, narrative, structural, semiotic,
stylistic specifics. In the field of poetics, the genre qualifications of works (poetics of
the genre), the specifics of the image-character world (poetics of imagery), narrative
forms and their various deviations, especially in large-format works (poetics of
narration), interaction of semantic-formal elements, which give the reader an idea the
artistic world of a certain work and its meaning(’s) (poetics of plot and composition),
stylistic constants and variations, variants, deviations, bifurcations, etc. (poetics of
style). Composition is considered as an open content-based eidological system, which
is combined with other typologically similar phenomena by theme, problem, genre
indicators. The poetic approach to the interpretation of texts fully illustrates the
syntagmatics, i. е. the patterns of combination of texts in a particular set (system),
semantics (decoding of certain characters encrypted with specific codes: generally
cultural, nationally cultural, individual, etc.) and pragmatics (identifying connections
between signs).
From the point of view of aesthetics, changes in the author’s guidelines for
modeling the art world at different stages of creation are studied. The aesthetic
approach to the comprehension of Franko’s prose involves the use of double optics:
through the eyepiece of poetics one must also see the psycho-existential silhouette of
the author, his plans, intentions and ways of their realization, and feel this Zeitgeist,
on the principles of which the artist created.
Necessary for consideration of the writer’s prose are, in addition, biographical
(each work is a reflection of the author’s biography), psychological (imprint of his
psychology), structural (identification of the main semantic and formal units of the
work, elucidation of mechanisms of interaction between them), semiotic (search for
significant elements of the text that enlighten its meanings), hermeneutic (explanation
of the work in accordance with the author’s intentions), receptive-aesthetic
(clarification of the peculiarities of the reception of the work through the eyes of
contemporaries) methods.
Any work of art becomes a cultural heritage of society only when it is actualized
in the minds of readers and retains receptive meanings. The book analyzes the
reception of Franko’s prose in life criticism (until 1916 inclusive) – in reviews,
literary portraits, historical and literary works, comparative studies, prefaces,
bibliographic notes, letters, memoirs, announcements, diaries, censorship materials,
obituaries, occasional mentions. Each critical manifestation bears the imprint of the
psychomental constitution of the critic, his worldview, aesthetic attitude to the text
itself and (often) to the figure of the author. However, a literary work becomes a full-
blooded phenomenon of the literary process when it is actualized in the mind of the
recipient reader and (very importantly) becomes the object of various decodings. The
application of these methods and approaches will allow to comprehend the prose
heritage of Ivan Franko in its immanent sense, as well as in the context of the
development of Ukrainian and – more broadly – European prose of the mid-
nineteenth – early twentieth century.
Key words: Ivan Franko, prose, poetics, aesthetics, reception, axonometric
approach, history of Ukrainian literature, ideological-aesthetic and content-formal
potential, eidological system, thematic, genre, narrative, structural, semiotic, stylistic
specificity, life criticism.