UCRAINA POLYTROPA: LA LETTERATURA DEL PERIODO 1917-1934 ALLA RICERCA DI UN ORIENTAMENTO TRA SPINTE ANTICOLONIALI E TENDENZE POSTCOLONIALI
This dissertation is focused on a study of the prose works by Maik Iohansen, Mykola Khvyl’ovyi, and Ostap Vyshnia, which were written mainly between 1922 and 1931. Through this study, I aim to propose a new theoretical framework for 1920s Ukrainian literature in general, which can shed light on some traits that have been previously overlooked. Indeed, the numerous studies focusing on 1920s literature have contributed to reinforcing a “martyrological” and nationalizing narrative that led to the literary production of this period being interpreted exclusively through the prism of the “Executed Renaissance paradigm” (Hryn 2004), thus ignoring the complex interweaving of cultures, languages, and ideological positions underlying it. Instead, I argue that a postcolonial approach (combined with a Bakhtinian reading of the texts) may help reassess the relevance of multicultural practices in the nation-building process of 1920s Ukraine, as it is reflected in literature. By defining the three authors’ work as a manifestation of a unitary aesthetic, cultural, and political conception that I call polytropy, I intend to highlight the interplay between political and aesthetic views, which is reflected, in turn, by an equipoise between an anticolonial and a postcolonial stance. Therefore, this dissertation analyzes the three writers’ different manifestations of polytropy in prose fiction. Namely, I consider these four thematic macro-areas: 1) intertextuality, 2) the travel topos, 3) plurilingualism, and 4) the dialogic structuring of the narrative. In my analysis, I show that the writers represent the Ukrainian cultural space as the intersection point of two “semiotic spaces” (Lotman 1990): 1) the Soviet one, with which Ukrainian culture shares the ‘subalternity complex’ towards Western Europe, perceived as the center of cultural colonialism whose influence extends to the whole of Eastern Europe (Wolff 1994; Morozov 2015); 2) Europe itself, of which Ukraine feels part, albeit marginal. The Ukrainian national semiotic space underlies these two contrasting systems, drawing its characterizing trait precisely from this hybrid and variously “subaltern” nature. In conclusion, the dialogic approach proposed in my dissertation allows me to shed new light on the work of three writers whose complexity has often been overlooked. At the same time, the definition of polytropy proves to be a functional interpretative approach to reconsider the entire literary decade in Ukraine. Particularly effective, for example, could be the use of postcolonial studies and, to a lesser extent, decolonial studies, as well as the focus on a dialogic and “carnivalesque” aesthetic (Bakhtin 1981).
Letteratura ucraina, modernismo, polytropia, studi postcoloniali, identità nazionale, Settore L-LIN/21 - Slavistica
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