Ukraine 11 клас Ukrainian Literature (profile level)

Chapters: 8

1. Literary and artistic avant-garde

Avant-garde and futurism

Avant-Garde Movements in Art and Literature – Avant-garde (French for "front guard") names the artists and writers who, from about 1905 to 1970, broke the old rules of art on purpose. Futurism praised speed and machines; Expressionism showed inner feeling; Dada used nonsense, chance and protest after the shock of the First World War; Surrealism explored dreams and the unconscious with automatic writing; Constructivism built clean, useful forms for a new society. Between the wars, avant-garde poets dropped rhyme and fixed metre, played with the shape of words on the page and wrote about cities and machines. After 1945, neo-avant-garde groups such as Fluxus turned art into events and everyday actions.

Neoclassicists and lyric poets · O. Turianskyi · Prose of the 1920s

Neoclassicism: Art That Went Back to Greece and Rome – Neoclassicism (about 1750–1830) was a style in art, buildings and writing that copied the calm order of ancient Greece and Rome. It began after Pompeii was dug up and grew with the Enlightenment's love of reason. It used straight lines, balance, sharp outlines, white marble and serious stories of duty, as a reaction against the playful Rococo. Key names: Jacques-Louis David, Ingres, Angelica Kauffman, Canova. Its ideas came back in the 1920s 'return to order' and metaphysical painting.
Expressionism: Painting What You Feel, Not What You See – Expressionism (about 1905–1925) was a modern art movement that showed inner feelings rather than the outside world. Artists bent shapes, used strong unreal colours and rough brushwork to show fear, anger, joy or loneliness. Its forerunners were Van Gogh and Munch. Fauvism in Paris (Matisse) freed colour; in Germany, Die Brücke (Kirchner) used jagged woodcut shapes and Der Blaue Reiter (Kandinsky, Marc) treated colour as spiritual feeling. Expressionism also shaped film, theatre, poetry and prose.

M. Kulish

Drama: Elements, Stagecraft and Performance – Drama is a story told by actors who become characters and act it out in front of an audience. Every drama has characters who want something, a conflict when those wants clash, a plot that builds tension to a climax and then resolves, dialogue, a setting and a theme. On stage, actors use voice and body, and the production adds lighting, set, costume and sound.

I. Bahrianyi and O. Dovzhenko

Coming soon

Poetry of the Sixtiers · Prose and poetry of the era

Coming soon

Literary process 1950s–1990s

Coming soon

E. Umerov

Coming soon

Contemporary literature · Local literature and review

Postmodernism in Literature – Postmodernism is a style and attitude in art and writing from the second half of the 20th century. It doubts big, neat stories and single truths. Typical features: broken or jumbled plots, irony and play, texts that refer to other texts (intertextuality) or to themselves, mixing of serious and popular culture, many narrators, and the absurd. The reader helps to build the meaning.