Familiarising the town space (Valerian Pidmohylny’s novel, "The city") Cover Image

Oswajanie przestrzeni miasta (Powieść Wałerjana Pidmohylnego "Miasto")
Familiarising the town space (Valerian Pidmohylny’s novel, "The city")

Author(s): Albert Nowacki
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: city, urban motives, time-space, anti-nationality, the influences of the French novel, European inspirations

Summary/Abstract: At the beginning of the 20th century, the Ukrainian literature almost did not know the tradition of the so called “urban literature” as its main object of interest has always been a village and its inhabitants. The local themes sensu stricte appeared in the Ukrainian literature as late as in the 1920s in the novel "The city" by Valerian Pidmohylny. The aim of the article is to trace how the city has become one of the characters of the novel, and how the author has used the evolution of the image of the city and local space in order to show the evolution of psyche and mentality of the main character. The author claims that the value of this “local” work, the first one in the history of the Ukrainian literature is the fact that it presents the reality of the Ukrainian city those days, with all its good and bad sides, typical problems of the period it was created in, and details of an every-day life at that time.

  • Issue Year: 2013
  • Issue No: 23
  • Page Range: 48-59
  • Page Count: 12
  • Language: Polish