Imperial literature and Slavic literary regionalism: a case study of Ukrainian journalism of the early 19th century

In the modern social and humanities sciences regional study is booming sphere. Of particular importance it has for the Slavic peoples, most of which was part of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian empires, and was forced to shape their national identity as part of the imperial regionalism. At the beginning of the XIX century Ukrainian literature was an integral part of Russian literature, its provincial version with a local touch. This view is shared and the local cultural elite. One of the most effective means of changing the regional "image" has become the base at the newly founded University of Kharkov several magazines - "Kharkiv Democritus" (1816), "Ukrainian Herald" (1816-1819) and "Ukrainian Journal" (1824-1825). Their first priority was the equal positioning of Ukraine in the imperial cultural space. In journalism dominated the reference function, aiming to "external" reader and describes the local realities -natural and geographical, historical and archaeological, cultural. Baedeker function performed a number of works of Ukrainian authors - I.I. Gurzheev, I.F. Vernet, O.M. Somov, M.F. Berlinskiy, R.T. Gonorsky, N. Levitsky, and others. It was a variety variant of sentimental travel notes, historical and archaeological essays and ethnographic surveys. A notable part of journalism was rich antique context. Little Russia, in fact, was declared heir to ancient Greece, which are well fit into the context of the Russian neoclassicism. Here was the characteristic feature of the Homeric-Virgil flavour of the most famous Ukrainian works of early XIX century "Eneida" by I.P. Kotlyarevsky. A remarkable cultural and ideological development of parallel ancient and Ukrainian-Russian mythology found at the V.V. Kapnist ("Short survey about Hyperboreans..." and other articles). Roman-Greek background of local literature and journalism showed an abundance of articles about ancient Greece and Rome, the history of the ancient states, their Arts and Sciences, using ancient realities: geographical, mythological, historical and cultural. Leading in these texts is the theme of "the Greeks or the Romans as the teachers" and the Ukraine as the heiress of their achievements. The idea of enlightenment and the image of the Ukraine as a worthy example of its beneficial effects have become the basis of local journalism, faced by Ukraine of the past, enslavement and backward, and Ukraine this -the realm of welfare, prosperity of Sciences and Arts.

Keywords

Authors

References