“THE STYLE OF AN IRONIC LEGEND”: THE CARNIVAL PARODYIN V. ZEMLIAK’S PROSE AND THE DISCREDITINGOF THE SOCIAL REALISM CANON

Volume 64-1 (2023)

Olena Voshchenko, PhD (Philol.), Researcher
Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, Kуiv

Summary

A detailed interpretation of the story “Lieutenant Colonel Shimanskyi” (1966) is offered to be a key to the paradoxical and outrageous V. Zemliak’s idiostyle. The role of the author’s definition of “heroic story”, annotation and intertextuality in the dialogue with the reader is highlighted. The main strategies of the poetics are analyzed: travesty, carnivalization, hyperbolization, grotesquery, irony, deconstruction of the absolutized image of a positive hero, as well as means of destroying the horizon of the reader’s expectations and signs of whimsical prose. It is proved that the mentioned elements of poetics perform the function of parodying and discrediting the templates of military-espionage prose in the version of social realism. It is emphasized that this gives reason to consider the poetically similar novel “Flock of Swans” (1971) in the direction of ironic parody. The similarity between the Ukrainian postmodernism of the 1990s and the idiostyle of V. Zemliak is emphasized.

Keywords: Vasyl Zemliak, carnivalization, parody, travesty, social realism, whimsical prose.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.17721/2520-6346.1(64).15-33

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