Marchenko Nataliia

Lesya Ukrainka and children’s reading: the genesis of representations of the writer’s figure

Section: Contexts of Lesya Ukrainka’s biographical world: A view from the 21st century

Abstract: The aim of the work. Consider the presentation of the life and work of Lesya Ukrainka in publications for children and youth and children’s reading, systematize and outline its stages, find out what models of Lesya Ukrainka’s biography were offered to the child-reader in Ukraine and what most influenced the genesis of these representations. The methodology is based on the principles of historicism, objectivity, as well as on general historical methods – chronological, retrospective, problem-thematic and statistical-analytical. The scientific novelty of the study is that for the first time biographical stories about Lesya Ukrainka in books for children and youth in Ukraine in the period from the 20s of the XX century were analyzed. and until 2021. Art-documentary and popular science publications about the fate of Lesya Ukrainka, addressed to children and youth, are analyzed, as well as the factors that transformed the scientific reception of personality and creativity of the writer to the level of school education (scientific and methodical manuals for teachers, prefaces that accompanied the publication of her works in specialized publishers and series) as well as artistic and popular science biographies of the writer for adults who entered the reading of adolescents, because there was no alternative that would meet the age requirements of children. Conclusions. Despite a significant amount of academic research, the figure of Lesya Ukrainka is still mostly revealed to the child only within the school discourse, and few artistic and popular science biographies of the outstanding writer have been created for children. “Adult” works adapted for children’s reading appeared in the middle of the XX century and were written entirely within the framework of the prevailing ideological doctrine at that time. Biographical texts adapted for children have not been updated for a long time and only during the independence of Ukraine began to change actively. However, hagiographic and heroic concepts prevailed until the 10s of the XXI century, despite the change in the academic representation of the figure of Lesya Ukrainka. Only in the publications of the last decade have cardinal changes in the understanding of the figure of the writer and conceptual principles of creating biographical publications for children created the conditions for the emergence of truly new – formally and meaningfully – biographies of Lesya Ukrainka for young readers.

Keywords: Lesya Ukrainka (Larysa Kosach-Kvitka), biography, books for children and youth, children’s reading, study of the writer’s biography at school.

  Full-text PDF    https://doi.org/10.15407/ub.21.144     Citation

• Marchenko Nataliia (Institute of Biographical Research of VNLU (Kyiv, Ukraine), [email protected]) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9814-0826

Cite:
Marchenko Nataliia (2021). Lesya Ukrainka and children’s reading: the genesis of representations of the writer’s figure. Biographistica Ukrainica, (21) 144-165. (In Ukrainan). https://doi.org/10.15407/ub.21.144

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