Витоки (а)симетрії нової української прози: моделі текстопородження Г. Квітки-Основ’яненка

Kvitka‑Osnovyanenko was the first prose writer of the new Ukrainian literature, the conventional starting point for which is dated as 1798, when Ivan Kotlyarevsky’s Aeneid was published. In 1833‑1834, Hryhoriy Kvitka‑Osnovyanenko began to publish his stories and short novels in Ukrainian. They served as a starting point for all subsequent prose in the Ukrainian language. A structural analysis of Kvitka’s prose has shown that his method of text construction still had much in common with folk tales: texts are constructed on the basis of elemental repetitions or binary oppositions. However, the author has already started to make important semantic shifts, introducing types of characters and collisions alien to folklore text per se. Thus the effect of deautomatization of the folklore perception is reached. The meaning of some texts, which were previously considered “humorous”, in the light of what has been said, acquires a meta‑narrative meaning: A Soldier’s Portrait and The Konotop Witch, have episodes that expose their main compositional technique (‘priyom’) and demonstrate the author’s conscious play with the narrative patterns of folklore.