A Hysterical Woman and the Modernist Aesthetics of Transgression: The Case of Lesia Ukraїnka

This lecture deals with the formation of modernist writing at the end of 19^th century in Ukrainian literature. The special accent is made on the anticolonial discourse that transgresses limitations of Ukrainian language usage, inscribes the "other" in the historical narrative and reinterprets European cultural codes. The topic refers to the role of the female authors and reveals how Lesia Ukraїnka (1871 -1913), a famous Ukrainian female writer, became engaged in the discussions on topical themes and motifs of the European fin de siècle consciousness, in particular female insanity, hysteria, and sexuality. The analysis of the first drama The Blue Rose (1896) by Lesia Ukraїnka as a multidimensional and experimental drama shows the author’s work with moral norms, psychological states, and personal biography. By enlarging the multinational field of Ukrainian language and reinterpreting the cultural codes of different epochs, from the medieval to the modern, Lesia Ukraїnka includes Ukrainian literature in the context of the fin de siècle European modernist culture.