An Anthology as a Representative Genre in Contemporary Ukrainian Literature

Abstract

In this article is analyzed a history and functions of an anthology in a modern Ukrainian literature from the last quarter of the 19th c. to the beginning of the 21st. An anthology is treated as a literary and anthropological project which is characterized by recasting of original materials and specific politics of its re-arangement. It proposes a new cultural value hierarchy, defines a literary field and the rules of its organization. As a form of literary self-representation an anthology participates in a process of forming a literary tradition and canon, its diversification up to the emergence of anti-canon; it intensifies a work of cultural memory, represents new literary genres and styles and also indicates an appearance of diaspora as a model of cultural citizenship. Numerous anthological projects also stress spacial, performative, subjective, gender, erotical, somatic, and oneirological aspects of creative writing; they rethink a very nature of literature as a creative experiment and as a social action in a context of mass culture and new media development. This allows us to consider the literary anthology as a way of a literary self-reflection and as a separate meta-genre in modern Ukrainian literature. The main genre-defining anthological qualities are such as selectivity, double methonimity, integrity and an ability to create new cultural values. The history of anthology as a specific meta-genre helps us to understand the general pecularities of modenr and postmodern literature, its structure and principles of development, its key problems and challanges and also its the most important achievements.