LITERATURE OF EMIGRATION. EXPERIENCE OF HISTORICAL PROSE IN THE FIELD OF FOREIGN CULTURE

Historical novel, as a special genre formation born of Romanticism, has become an artistic tool for the reproduction of the past, its discovery and invention. Historical prose is the literary space where two worldview narrative strategies intersect, overlap, and sometimes collide: these are history that (in its academic sense) seeks to recreate the ‘true past’, and literature, which is a particular representation and development of the world.  Historical prose of Ukrainian emigration appears as a fairly integral literary and aesthetic phenomenon during two interwar decades of the 20th century and ends at the border of the 1990s — aft er Ukraine gained its independence. For nations that lost their statehood, the return of the past, its glorification is an important means of forming national identity and self-consciousness. The historical novel of the Ukrainian emigration is a relentless attempt to root its next generations in the national tradition of collective memory. In general, for societies in which the state tradition has been interrupted, historical prose can be an essential factor in restoring / maintaining national memory, as well as a means of creating national myths, projecting the past into modern problems of a stateless nation, and preserving national traditions. The historical prose of the Ukrainian emigration was actually focused on these aims, taking responsibility for the nationalist and philosophic perspective rooted in the past in order to preserve and increase it in the future.  The aspiration and experience of Ukrainian emigration in other countries carries a number of tasks that it set for itself. Th ese were, in particular, the preservation of the native language, culture, and creative activity, including historical prose on the themes prohibited in the mainland literature, the formation of the strategy of collective memory through historical prose.