IMAHOLOGICAL ASPECT OF UKRAINIAN HISTORICAL ROMANCE OF THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Abstract

Ukrainian and Polish historical Romance of the late nineteenth century are the means of creating new projects which represent the past. The understanding of the events of the XVII century in historical fiction of
Henryk Sienkiewicz, Ivan Nechui-Levytskyi, and Mykhailo Starytskyi is closely connected with the search of national identity strategies. A special place in Polish and Ukrainian historical narratives takes the construction of imahological images as far as in the prose of 1880-90 years just because of the opposition between I and The Other the mental traits of national life become significant. In the center of the Polish literary selfrepresentation appears nobility as the embodiment of national character, while in the Ukrainian version this place is taken by Cossacks. However, the leading role either in Polish or in Ukrainian historical fiction
is played by the construction of heteroimages of neighbouring ethnic groups, which have a common history. In prose of Henryk Sienkiewicz the representation of Ukrainian people acquires distinct negative connotations. Polish writer primarily tries to represent the Ukrainian people as a backward and inferior group of characters who instinctively inclined only to destruction and looting. However, this approach reveals striking colonial methods in the construction of The Other. Henryk Sienkiewicz always tells about Ukrainian people as a wild community, while Polish representatives civilize the backward natives and this is a typical plot for the concept of Orientalism in the nineteenth century.
In historical novels of Ivan Nechui-Levytskyi and Mykhailo Starytskyi, the bright negation of Polish nobility is also brightly represented. Ukrainian authors primarily base on the social factor in the construction of Polish heteroimages: luxury and wealth of the aristocracy are estimated as moral degradation because they are obtained due to the social exploitation of Ukrainian. But in a peculiar demonization of the Polish nation, a special place is occupied by the anticolonial strategy of Ukrainian prose of 1880-90 years. In general, either Polish or Ukrainian historical Romance demonstrate a tendency to represent The Other with the help of negative labeling in order to construct almost ideal autoimage.