Есей як жанр на перетині літератури та журналістики

Abstract

У дисертації досліджено жанрові особливості та специфіку функціонування есею в умовах художньої та мас-медійної комунікацій. Розглянуто історію розвитку жанру есею в українській та зарубіжній літературі й журналістиці. Узагальнено наукові підходи до теорії жанру есею та виокремлено його визначальні риси. Здійснено аналіз художнього та публіцистичного есею з погляду теорії комунікації. Досліджено реалізацію лінгвістичних текстових категорій у жанрі есею та особливості його функціонування в друкованих і цифрових медіа. Особлива увага приділена медійним категоріям, яких набуває есей під час публікації в засобах масової інформації. Проаналізовано формальні та змістові трансформації есею під час переходу тексту з цифрового середовища у друковане та навпаки. На основі аналізу провідних дискурсів сучасної української есеїстики та авторських наративних стратегій розглянуто роль жанру есею в осмисленні проблем національної ідентичності. The thesis focuses on analyzing the essay as a genre in the conditions of literary and media communication in order to find out its literature and media features. The study opens with overview of the history of the genre in Ukrainian and world literature and journalism. The genre model of the essay in world and Ukrainian literature is the product of modernism, the period when philosophy penetrated into literature. The period of postmodernism opened up new possibilities for development of the essay, due to the fact that the dominant features of the contemporary literary consciousness are verbal play, irony, emotionality, paradoxical thinking, open-ended form, intermediality, intertextuality, and appealing to the reader as a co-writer of the text. The dissertation generalizes theoretical approaches towards the genre of essay. Scholars define the essay as journalistic genre, a literary genre, a literary form transcending genre limits, a form of reflective writing, etc. The author of the thesis provides her own definition of the essay. It is a non-fiction literary genre, which combines both literary and journalistic features and has a free composition, opens an opportunity for a vivid expression of the author's individuality and contains a quick reaction to issues of great social significance. The author of the dissertation applies theory of communication to consider genre features of literary and journalistic essay. The thesis provides a scrupulous analysis of all textual categories of the essay. Another problem considered in the study is functioning of the genre in print and digital media. As a special type of text, the essay embodies all basic semantic and structural categories, such as integrity, cohesion, divisibility into parts, ability to transmit information, prospection/retrospection, completeness, modality, and intertextuality. At the same time, the author of the dissertations proves that these text categories in the essay have their peculiarities, because they depend on conditions of communication and the author's pragmatic guidelines. The communicative space of the essay is expanded through intertextual and hypertext links, multimedia and type of media, in which the essay is published. It happens because writers have to take into account thematic preferences and information policy of publishers. The intertextuality and the hypertextuality of contemporary essays ruin the principles of linear text perception and offer a broad spectrum of reading options. The most common intertextual connections in the contemporary essays are references to the author’s previous works and their characters, reminiscences of famous texts and characters, and allusions to the works of predecessors. In the context of mass media, the essay becomes a kind of media text, which operates in extra-linguistic conditions and acquires such essential massmedia features as dynamic character and stream mode of presentation of the contents, disposability and non-reproducibility of information. At the same time, the essay proves to be deeply integrated into information space and information policies of media owners and producers. When re-publishing their essays in the digital environment, the authors transcode the printed texts, adapting them to new communicative conditions. However, writers do not use all advantages that electronic media opens. They transform the texts only at the surficial level and limit themselves to playing with paratext, mechanically reducing or increasing the size of publications, to changing titles, etc. The active use of intertextuality, metaphorical style and structural flexibility make the essay a laboratory of solution of the most urgent intellectual problems of humanity. The thesis demonstrates the potential of contemporary Ukrainian essays in overcoming the crisis of the Ukrainian national identity. In their essays, the writers try to reevaluate historical experience and find new values, which can serve as benchmarks for their nation. The leading nation-building discourses in the essays by the Ukrainian writers are post-colonialism and Europeanism. The writers critically reconsider the colonial heritage of the Ukrainian society and focus on the national traumas that were inherited from the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. In order to make the Ukrainians believe that they are a nation with their own language, culture and traditions, the authors of the essays use a number of anti-colonial strategies, such as self-criticism, opposing their nation to other nations, and demonization of the Other. The discourse of Europeanism in the contemporary Ukrainian essays includes the Austro-Hungarian myth of Galicia, presented in a melancholic and nostalgic way. It concerns references to everyday life and architecture during the period of prosperity of Western Ukrainian cities when they were parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, etc. Another manifestation of the Europeanist strategy is appealing to modern European values, standards of life, etc. as a kind of national ideal, which the Ukrainians have to achieve. A significant component of the national identity in contemporary Ukrainian essays is the discourse of ethnicity. Its constituents are language, customs, religion, and culture. The essays of the contemporary Ukrainian writers clearly trace the regional self-identification of their authors, emphasize the opposition «we» – «they» on regional and linguistic levels, and use strategies aimed at exacerbating conflicts and humiliating the Other.