Artistic Representations of Autobiographical Memory in Contemporary Ukrainian Prose for Children and Youth

Abstract

The article is a study on the artistic and aesthetic aspects of portraying autobiographical memory in contemporary Ukrainian prose for children and youth. Analyzing two autobiographical novels, Volodymyr Rutkivsky’s Poterchata and Olha Slonovska’s Girl on the Ball, the author argues that writers publish not all episodes from autobiographical memory in their works. Moreover, she notes that while Rutkivsky and Slonovska portray individual and collective memory, philosophical self-reflection, and historical self-memory, the issue of autobiographical memory is fundamental in their narratives. The article also contains a detailed analysis of the psychology of the image of the narrator, the narrative practices and perspectives, as well as the receptive-aesthetic coordinates of autobiographical texts.