Ukraine 11 клас Ukrainian Literature

Chapters: 9

1. Executed Renaissance and the avant-garde

Literature of the 1920s

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.

P. Tychyna and Ye. Pluzhnyk · Kyiv neoclassicists

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.

M. Khvylovyi, Yu. Yanovskyi, V. Pidmohylnyi · Ostap Vyshnia

Coming soon

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.

B.-I. Antonych and O. Turianskyi · Literature in emigration

Coming soon

O. Dovzhenko and O. Honchar

Coming soon

Poets of the 1960s · Prose of the 1960s

Coming soon

L. Kostenko · V. Stus

Existentialism: You Are What You Choose – Existentialism is a 19th–20th century way of thinking about human life. Its main idea: for a person, existence comes before essence. A tool is designed for a purpose first; a human is born first and then makes a self through choices. So we are free, and with freedom comes anxiety and full responsibility. Jaspers showed that limit situations (death, suffering, struggle, guilt) wake us up to ask what matters. Hiding behind the crowd or fate is bad faith; owning one's choices is authenticity. Key thinkers: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus; in Spanish thought Unamuno and Ortega y Gasset.

Literature at the turn of the 21st century · 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.