Information on the thesis

This dissertation is the first comprehensive study of the creative legacy of Luka Lutsiv, a Ukrainian public figure representing the generation of Cossack Riflemen, a renowned literary scholar and critic, a member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, a long-standing author of the journal “Academic Literary Herald” (Lviv) and a co-editor of the newspaper “Svoboda” (New York). In the dissertation, the author applied the elements of postcolonial approach and cultural anthropology. In particular, the concept of “cultural landscape” provided an opportunity to define the multi-faceted phenomenon of Luka Lutsiv, his worldview and methodological evolution in the cultural and historical context of Cossack Riflemen, the interwar twenty-year period, and the emigration literature. The paper highlighted the distinctive features of his studies at the first stage of his creativity, namely the interwar (continental) period, as well as at the second stage, namely the post-war (emigration) period. It provided insight into the methodological principles of studying the Ukrainian literature in the context of “double track”.

The author identified the following concepts of literary studies discussed by Luka Lutsiv: a comparative model of Shevchenko’s creativity studied against the general Slavic literary background; an original intertextual approach to the interpretation of Ivan Franko’s life and creativity through references to artistic texts; an evolutionary model of new Ukrainian literature, based on the Renaissance return to the vivifying ground of the national culture; a combination of fundamental analytical, interpretative, and journalistic principles in Lutsiv’s literary and critical stylistics.

The paper brought to light the cultural and comparative principles of scholar’s concepts related to Shevchenko studies and Franko studies.

The dissertation emphasized the concept of new literature of the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, which were described by Luka Lutsiv in the papers on Markiyan Shashkevych, Tymofiy Bordulyak, Olha Kobylyanska, Vasyl Stefanyk, and in the preface to the collection of the English-language anthology “Their Land: an anthology of Ukrainian short stories” (1964). Furthermore, it gave prominence to the problem and thematic, conceptual, aesthetic, and genre parameters of Lutsiv’s literary and critical writings in the journal “Academic Literary Herald” and the newspaper “Svoboda”. The paper provided a comparison of methodological approaches in the above-mentioned editions stipulated by distinguished socio-historical circumstances and socio-cultural environments.

It was proven that Luka Lutsiv’s concepts of literary studies, his interpretation and assessments had stood against the totalitarian ideology under the circumstances of a double-track literary process in the middle of the twentieth century and preserved the educative value for modern science.

Key words: a concept of literary studies, literary criticism, literary process, Shevchenko studies, Franko studies, Stefanyk studies, “Academic Literary Herald”, “Svoboda”, postcolonial studies, journalistic style, worldview evolution, methodology, cultural landscape.