Кузьменко О. Драматичне буття людини в українському фольклорі: концептуальні форми вираження (період Першої та Другої світових воєн) : монографія. Львів : Інститут народознавства НАН України, 2018. 728 с., вкл. 16 іл. (original) (raw)

The author of the monograph analyzes the dramatic existence of Ukrainian individual in the 20th century which can fully be comprehended through folklore concepts objectivizing various life experiences, practices and folk perceptions of world wars and their consequences – Ukrainian national liberation struggles of the first half of the 20th century, the Holodomor (Famine-Genocide) of 1932-1933 and post-war deportations. For the first time the Ukrainian folklore studies are offered a new method of researching historical folklore on a wide resource material base. The author elucidates theoretical and methodological principles of the notion folklore concept that is the instrument for understanding multi-layer senses of folklore language used to verbalize social and historic collective knowledge of the traumas from the past. The author distinguishes 12 concepts (war, prayer, death, enemy, mother, sorrow, joy, fear, home, captivity, grave, Ukraine) which appear to be constant information signs of memory and occur in prose and song texts of various folklore genres. They help to represent the emotional and imagery panorama of the unique history of common people: their sufferings and heroic deeds, defeats and victories against the background of the difficult age of political changes and totalitarian crimes. The author offers a mechanism for distinguishing concepts through the index structure which makes it possible to synthesize universal knowledge about the world armed conflicts, about adversary and hero, about the spaces of native land and captivity, about the symbols of the Ukrainian state. The book opens a new reading of contemporary non-ritual folklore texts which have been functioning during the 20th – early 21st centuries. The book is meant for folklore scholars, ethnologists, culture scholars, linguists, sociologists, as well as for specialists in history of Ukraine, oral history, female studies, ethnical philosophy, psychology, all researchers and admirers of the Ukrainian spiritual culture.