Bridging East and West: Ol'ha Kobylians'ka, Ukraine's Pioneering Modernist

by Yuliya Ladygina

Overview

Bridging East and West explores the literary evolution of Ol’ha Kobylians'ka, one of Ukraine’s foremost modernist writers. Investigating themes of feminism, populism, Nietzscheanism, nationalism, and fascism in her works, this study presents an alternative intellectual genealogy in turn-of-the-century European arts and letters whose implications reach far beyond the field of Ukrainian studies.

For feminist scholars, Bridging East and West makes accessible a thorough account of a central, yet overlooked, woman writer who served as a model and a contributor within a major cultural tradition. For those working in Victorian studies or comparative fascism and for those interested in Nietzsche and his influence on European intellectuals, Kobylians’ka emerges in this study as an unlikely, but no less active, trailblazer in the social and aesthetic theories that would define European debates about culture, science, and politics in the first half of the twentieth century. For those interested in questions of transnationalism and intersectionality, this study’s discussion of Kobylians’ka’s hybrid cultural identity and philosophical program exemplifies cultural interchange and irreducible complexities of cultural identity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442630772
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	10/25/2019
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Yuliya V. Ladygina is an assistant professor in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures, The Pennsylvania State University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations for Standard Editions

Introduction

1. The Art of Feminist Compromise
2. New Woman, New Myth
3. The Populist Trial
4. Hidden Modernism
5. War and Fiction
6. Between the Right and the Left

Afterword
Notes
Works Cited
Index

What People are Saying About This

Vitaly Chernetsky

"Providing an overview of the intellectual evolution of Ukraine's leading woman prose writer, Bridging East and West is clearly a labor of love, evidenced by the thoughtful and detailed reading of several key texts."

Michael M. Naydan

"Yuliya Ladygina's book is a well-conceived, well-researched, and well-written monograph that will become the standard work of literary criticism on Ukrainian prose writer Olha Kobylians'ka in English. The author makes use of extensive library as well as private archives to allow for a reassessment of the large but still underappreciated contribution of Kobylians'ka to Ukrainian Early Modernism as well as her place in Ukrainian cultural discourse."

Editorial Reviews

"Providing an overview of the intellectual evolution of Ukraine’s leading woman prose writer, Bridging East and West is clearly a labor of love, evidenced by the thoughtful and detailed reading of several key texts."

—Vitaly Chernetsky, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Kansas.

"Yuliya Ladygina’s book is a well-conceived, well-researched, and well-written monograph that will become the standard work of literary criticism on Ukrainian prose writer Olha Kobylians’ka in English. The author makes use of extensive library as well as private archives to allow for a reassessment of the large but still underappreciated contribution of Kobylians’ka to Ukrainian Early Modernism as well as her place in Ukrainian cultural discourse."

—Michael M. Naydan, Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages, The Pennsylvania State University

From the Publisher

"Yuliya Ladygina's book is a well-conceived, well-researched, and well-written monograph that will become the standard work of literary criticism on Ukrainian prose writer Olha Kobylians'ka in English. The author makes use of extensive library as well as private archives to allow for a reassessment of the large but still underappreciated contribution of Kobylians'ka to Ukrainian Early Modernism as well as her place in Ukrainian cultural discourse."

Michael M. Naydan

"Providing an overview of the intellectual evolution of Ukraine's leading woman prose writer, Bridging East and West is clearly a labor of love, evidenced by the thoughtful and detailed reading of several key texts."

Vitaly Chernetsky