THE LITERARY AND ARTISTIC DISCOURSE OF STEPAN DIHTIAR’S SCHOLARLY AND CRITICAL LEGACY

Abstract

The article provides a comprehensive analysis of the scholarly and literary-critical legacy of the Ukrainian literary scholar S. Dihtiar, whose professional activity was closely associated with Chernivtsi University. On the basis of archival documents, in particular the scholar’s personal file, the facts of his biography have been clarified and substantially supplemented. The study traces his education at Kyiv University, participation in the Second World War and the partisan movement, and clarifies the beginning of his teaching career, among other aspects. In this context, literary-critical reviews of S. Dihtiar’s work, as well as assessments of his pedagogical and scholarly activity, are also incorporated into the analysis. Considerable attention is devoted to the main vectors of the researcher’s scholarly interests. The article identifies academic studies in which S. Dihtiar examines specific aspects of the development of early Ukrainian literature, as well as publications dedicated to the works of Ukrainian writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly authors from Bukovyna. The paper elucidates the thematic scope of articles in which S. Dihtiar analyzes the works of Ivan Vyshenskyi, the functioning of humor and satire in burlesque-travesty poems and intermedias of the eighteenth century, and the specific features of translated prose narratives. Emphasis is placed on S. Dihtiar’s significant achievements in the field of Ukrainian Shevchenko studies, and his contribution to the study of the life and work of the Ukrainian writer S. Kovaliv is summarized, the result of which was a dissertation and the publication of a collection of the writer’s literary works. The article also offers an overview of materials devoted to the history of literary development in Bukovyna, as well as S. Dihtiar’s literary and artistic publications in Bukovynian periodicals. In particular, literary-critical surveys of the works of Bukovynian prose writers and reviews of theatrical productions staged at the Olha Kobylianska Chernivtsi Music and Drama Theatre are analyzed. It is demonstrated that the scholar’s academic and literary-critical activity constitutes an important source for studying the history of Ukrainian literature and the artistic life of Bukovyna in the second half of the twentieth century.