Browsing by Author "Krys, Svitlana"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Andrii Liubka’s Carbide: Ukrainian democratic reforms through a dark glass
    (2019) Krys, Svitlana
    The Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine and its reforms are the topics of Andrii Liubka’s novel Karbid (Carbide, 2015). Employing Voltairean laughter and neo-Gothic aesthetics, Liubka presents the idea of European integration (one of the expected outcomes of the reforms) implemented practically by the corrupt elites of the imagined Transcarpathian town of Vedmediv as a money-laundering enterprise – an underground tunnel for smuggling drugs and people’s organs from Ukraine to Europe. The author proposes that the elites – most of whom are criminals – personify Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection in the novel and represent social spheres that need reform. Contrary to the Euromaidan goals, these comprador elites desire even stronger borders between Ukraine and the European Union, as these facilitate their shadow economy, and they subject the local population to economic and social decline, turning them into disposable human waste. By applying the concept of abjection in its psychoanalytic and social forms to Liubka’s tragicomic novel, the author argues that his text points to Ukraine’s struggle to define itself as “West” and shed its totalitarian legacy of the Soviet “East,” and brings attention to the conflict between the post-Euromaidan national strivings of Ukraine’s citizens and the rampant corruption that negates their efforts.
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    Falling into the existential abyss: Ivan Franko’s realist prose in experiments with gothic and crime fiction modes
    (2018) Krys, Svitlana
    This article examines three novels by Ukrainian realist Ivan Franko (1856-1916): Dlia domashn'oho ohnyshcha (For the Home Hearth, 1892), Osnovy suspil'nosti (Pillars of Society, 1894), and Perekhresni stezhky (Fateful Crossroads, 1900). Previous scholars saw elements of crime fiction in these works, but the actual relationship between the two genres of crime fiction and realism has not been fully developed. By studying the conventions of crime fiction, along with its antecedent, the Gothic, and their influence on Franko, the author shows the make-up of the early Ukrainian crime fiction genre and points to its importance in understanding Franko’s vacillation between realist and modernist tendencies. As she argues, the scales of his vacillation are tipped toward modernism in its decadent form, an existential void that characterized fin de siècle Europe. Hence, Franko’s “ideal” or programmatic realism (defined by Franko as a literary style with a didactic tendency aimed at educating society), which he introduced under the appealing cover of crime and Gothic motifs, ultimately failed him. The author proposes that it is the creative modes (Gothic and crime fiction) that Franko chose for voicing his ideas about social reforms that led him, unsuspectingly, away from his programmatic goal and toward the decadent aspects of modernism.
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    Textual odalisque: from Roxolana to Hürrem Sultan
    (2022) A., Y.; Krys, Svitlana
    My thesis examines the trajectory of literary depictions of the enigmatic figure of Hürrem Sultan (otherwise known as Roxolana, circa. 1502-1558), the legal wife of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and the first Haseki Sultan, or Imperial Consort, of the Ottoman Empire. It will first consider Hürrem’s emergence on the European stage as a product of Orientalist discourse, then focus in detail on her more recent Ukrainian and Turkish cultural depictions. To assist my analysis, I will employ the theory of re-Orientalism, which is defined by Lisa Lau as an approach that determines “how cultural producers with eastern affiliations come to terms with an orientalized East, whether by complying with perceived expectations of western readers, by playing with them or by discarding them altogether." I will examine the Ukrainian opera Roksoliana (by Denys Sichynsky, 1911) and two contemporary Turkish productions, the television show Muhteşem Yüzyıl (The Magnificent Century, 2011, Tims Productions) and the play Gayri Resmi Hurrem (Unofficial Roxelana, by Ozen Yula, 2003) to show how they question, critique, and dispel Orientalist tropes associated with Roxolana in the western European imagination.
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    Textual odalisque: From Roxolana to Hürrem Sultan
    (2022) A., Y.; Krys, Svitlana
    My thesis examines the trajectory of literary depictions of the enigmatic figure of Hürrem Sultan (otherwise known as Roxolana, circa. 1502-1558), the legal wife of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and the first Haseki Sultan, or Imperial Consort, of the Ottoman Empire. It will first consider Hürrem’s emergence on the European stage as a product of Orientalist discourse, then focus in detail on her more recent Ukrainian and Turkish cultural depictions. To assist my analysis, I will employ the theory of re-Orientalism, which is defined by Lisa Lau as an approach that determines “how cultural producers with eastern affiliations come to terms with an orientalized East, whether by complying with perceived expectations of western readers, by playing with them or by discarding them altogether." I will examine the Ukrainian opera Roksoliana (by Denys Sichynsky, 1911) and two contemporary Turkish productions, the television show Muhteşem Yüzyıl (The Magnificent Century, 2011, Tims Productions) and the play Gayri Resmi Hurrem (Unofficial Roxelana, by Ozen Yula, 2003) to show how they question, critique, and dispel Orientalist tropes associated with Roxolana in the western European imagination.
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    Vampires in Halyna Pahutiak's contemporary Ukrainian fiction: biting into the global myth
    (2018) Krys, Svitlana
    This article discusses the manner in which the vampire fiction of contemporary Ukrainian author I lalyna Pahutiak enters into a dialogue with the global vampire discourse whose core or “cultural capital” finds its origins largely in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula (1897). Through discussion of thematic, stylistic, and structural similarities and differences between Pahutiak and Stoker's portrayals of the vampire myth, my paper sheds light on the conscious mythmaking strategies that Pahutiak employs to return the vampire symbolically from the West to Eastern Europe where it originated, and reassess the core characteristics of the Dracula myth.