Body or Personality? Female Physicality in Selected Short Ukrainian Prose and Graphics of the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

The anthology raises the provocative question of the attitude towards female corporeality in domestic prose of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The introduction by the editor Olga Lahutenko “The Role of Women” outlines the main theoretical aspects of the problem, emphasizing the fundamental points in the text. In the book, readers will find landmark works by classics of Ukrainian literature, and will be able to trace the change in the interpretation of the image of women in short stories from I. Nechuy-Levytsky to O. Kobylyanska. In addition to literary texts, the book contains illustrative material taken from the monograph “Ukrainian Graphics of the First Third of the 20th Century” published by us. The afterword by Olga Lahutenko reveals the issue of the presentation of corporeality in Ukrainian graphics of the indicated period, which was ahead of the main body of contemporary literature. This approach will help to clarify the peculiarities of cultural reflection of women, their corporeality depending on various social and historical circumstances, using eloquent examples, and will also allow us to look at the present in a different way, to assess how modern we have become.