At home and away: Community belonging in Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian adventure fiction, 1918-1960

Semenova, Daria

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/122015 Copy

Description

Title

At home and away: Community belonging in Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian adventure fiction, 1918-1960

Author(s)

Semenova, Daria

Issue Date

2023-12-01

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Sobol, Valeria

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Sobol, Valeria

Committee Member(s)

• Murav, Harriet
• Gasyna, George
• Balina, Marina

Department of Study

Slavic Languages & Literature

Discipline

Slavic Languages & Literature

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• adventure
• children's literature
• YA literatures
• Ukrainian
• Polish
• Russian
• Soviet
• belonging
• citizenship
• community

Abstract

Adventure novels, traditionally considered merely as an entertaining genre and relegated to young and popular readers, in fact, play a key ideological role in fostering a sense of community in their readers. This dissertation argues that Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian authors adapted the adventure genre to teach readers about the community and values perceived as essential for it. With the images of exemplary protagonists, they educated the reader what it means to be a community member, as they wanted young readers to become active builders of their social and political worlds. This study aims to answer the question how the same genre structure was used in different political situations: a nation fighting for independence, a young nation-state, a socialist republic, and an émigré community. Exotic adventure novels as a genre developed its classical form in the late nineteenth century. Scholars have argued that in Western literatures, adventure genre was complicit in the imperialist ideologies of the epoch often called ‘the age of empires’, inculcating their young readers with Eurocentric values and preparing them to bear the “white man’s burden” vis-à-vis colonial subjects. The formulaic structure of adventure fiction requires a clear distinction between protagonists and antagonists and the protagonists’ victory in the end. These formal requirements make the genre an effective means of educating the reader about “our” and “their” place in the world and the rightness of “our” way of life and values. The ‘age of empires,’ however, was just one page in the history of the genre. Adventure fiction started to appear in Slavic literatures in the early twentieth century. At the time, Poles and Ukrainians had no independent states, let alone colonial politics to bolster, so the genre could hardly inherit without changes the function of an “energizing myth of the empire.” Russian literature also experienced an abrupt change after the 1917 revolution, as the Bolshevik ideology disavowed the imperialist attitudes to the Soviet periphery and to the colonial policies elsewhere. Thus, shifting the focus from the Western narratives, my study enriches the understanding of the ideological potential of popular literature. This study explores several major and minor adventure novels written in Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian in 1920s-1950s. Making use of structural and post-structural approaches, it examines how the dichotomies, such as “Us” and “Them,” “Home” and “Away,” “Own” and “Alien” are constructed but also problematized. The methodologies of literary imagology and axiology lend devices to analyze the construction of images of national groups and systems of values. Reader-response criticism helps examine how the narratives attempt to entangle the implied reader, which enhances the impact of these “innocuous” narratives. The case studies from three national literatures are organized in six chapters, grouped conceptually into two parts: Venturing out and Coming home. Part 1, “Venturing out”, analyzes how, adopting existing genre models from Western literatures, Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian authors subverted or reasserted the original hierarchies depending on what puts the in-group in a more favorable light. The Slavic retellings of recognizable plots – about castaways, lost kingdoms, frontier of the civilization, and voyages around the world – disavow European colonialist practices but eagerly use the social capital of the Slavs’ whiteness. Part 2, “Coming Home,” analyzes new structural types created in these national literatures. Adventure fiction thematizes Ukrainian and Polish struggle for independence, rewriting into inspiring narratives the traumatic episodes of collective memory, an unusual ingredient in this entertaining genre. In Soviet literature in Ukrainian and Russian, the new plots in adventure fiction appear incorporating the ideologemes of class struggle and defense against the enemies from beyond. This study offers a fresh interpretation of the ideological functions of the adventure narratives: rather than associating the adventure genre specifically with imperialist ideologies, as it has been done before, I claim that this narrative structure is equally effective in promoting competing ideologies, including anti-imperialist, nationalist, and Marxist thought. Stepping aside from the Western European literary canon and focusing on Slavic literatures with their varied historical and political contexts allows demonstrating significantly new aspects of how adventure fiction is used to indoctrinate readers and promote the feeling of belonging.

Graduation Semester

2023-12

Type of Resource

Thesis

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2023 Daria Semenova

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