Genre peculiarities of the Christmas story “Brother Stutterer’s Christmas” by Dzvinka Matiiash

Abstract

The Subject of the Study  are the genre peculiarities of the Christmas story “Brother Stuttererʼs Christmas” from collection “13 Christmas stories”. It is stated that a huge amount of the works of this genre have been published, having children and adults as their target audience. Thus, it may be regarded as the resumption of a tradition of writing Christmas stories in Ukrainian literary process. But the problem is that studying those stories remains mainly unsustained — as a rule these works are analyzed in book and other kind of reviews close to Christmas and New Year holidays. The Aim of the Study is analysis of the Christmas story “Brother Stuttererʼs Christmas”, its stylistic peculiarities, specialty of genre transformation. Research methodology is presented by close reading as well as the philological method of studying of a work of fiction, so the author investigates the stylistic dominants and literary peculiarities of this Christmas novel, defining its specific characteristics as well as the symbolic figures. The Results and Originality of the Study are: the notion of «philosophic and existential Christmas story», its key features and constituent parts. These features provide for the composition based on the combination of the two different points of view. The same event is presented through perspectives of the two different characters, with their views being brought together by symbolic figures — both from outside (from the other person's perspective) and inside (in their own eyes). Every character as if repeats his own version of events, while symbolic figures, closely connected with Christmas theme, create a symbolic tunnel of notions and ideas, which unfold before the reader. Moreover, the author refines the genre specific nature of a Christmas story, the functioning of Christmas imagery in modern Ukrainian literature. The practical significance is connected with understanding the new stage of genre’s evolution and its publishing prospects.