UKRAINIAN LITERATURE. The Ukrainians are the descendants of the South Russians of the Kiev period, and have consequent claims to regard the Russian literature of the II-13th century as Ukrainian. But as the literary tradition was preserved only in Muscovy, the period is treated under RUSSIAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. There is a gap between the last South Russian chronicles of the 13th century and the Ukrainian re vival of the 16th, the language of the latter being as different from that of the former as early Middle English is from late Anglo-Saxon.
The Ukrainian literature of the I6-17th century is entirely dominated by the national and religious struggle against Rome and Poland. In its early stages it had its centre in Galicia and Volynia, and produced a polemist of genius in Ivan Vyshensky (fl. 1586-1614). Later it became centred Kiev, and under the influence of Peter Mohila, metropolitan of Kiev borrowed Latin methods to fight the Latins. The writers of the period were polemists, rhetoricians and grammarians ; they also wrote verse and plays after Latin school models. Some of the early 18th century interludes in the latter are of interest. In the later 17th and i8th centuries Ukraine was drained of its best intellectual forces, which were attracted to Muscovy, where the church from 1700 to 1760 was dominated by Ukrainian prelates. After 1750 the Ukrainian gentry began to be rapidly Russianized, many of them attaining to eminence in Russian letters (e.g., Gogol, q.v.). Of those that remained Ukrainian the most re markable was the wandering philosopher and "Christian epicure," Gregory Skovoroda (1722-94). The language used during this period was a mixture of Ukrainian, Church-Slavonic, Polish, and in the later i8th century, Great-Russian elements.
Ukrainian folklore is very rich and original. The best-known type of songs are the so-called dumy (collections by Antonovich and Drahomanov, 1874-75; Catherine Hrushevska, part i., 1927). They have an historical background (the Cossack wars of the I7th century), but they are elegiac rather than narrative. There is also a great variety and wealth of the lyrical folksongs. They have had a strong influence on modern Ukrainian literature. The
first publications of folksongs by Prince Tsertelev (1819) and Maksimovich (1827) were important landmarks in the first stages of the modern Ukrainian revival.
Modern Ukrainian literature dates from Ivan Kotlyarevsky (1769-1838). His Travesty of the Aeneid (1798) and his comedy Natalka of Poltava (1816) are closely related to the Russian lite rary tradition, but the use of the vernacular was a new departure. The successors of Kotlyarevsky did not rise above the level of a provincial Heimatkunst. A new spirit was introduced by Taras Shevchenko (1814-61). He was born a peasant and a serf, a fact that emphasizes the essentially • democratic and rural character of modern Ukrainian literature. A romantic nationalist in his early, a revolutionary internationalist in his later, work, Shev chenko had deep roots in Ukrainian folklore. He has become the symbol of Ukrainian nationality. His younger contemporary Marko-Vovchok (pseudonym of Marie Markovich, née Velinsky, 1834-1907), a Great Russian by birth, wrote stories of peasant life which have made her a standard of good Ukrainian prose.
The persecution of the Ukrainian movement in Russian Ukraine culminating in the practically prohibitive decree of 1876 favoured its growth in Galicia, where such scholars as Michael Hrushevsky an émigré from Russia and Ivan Franko (1856 1916) made of Lwow the centre of Ukrainian culture. Franko was also the most remarkable Galician novelist of the period. In Russian Ukraine the most outstanding writers were the poetess Lesya Ukrainka (pseudonym of Larissa Kvitka, née Kossach, 1872-1913) and the novelist Michael Kotsyubinsky BIBLIOGRAPHY.-In Ukrainian: S. Yefremov (Efremov), History of Ukrainian Literature (i9ii) ; Doroshkevych, Manual of Ukrainian Literary History (1927). The History of Ukrainian Literature of M. Hrushevsky (1923 seq.) has, with its sixth part, reached the middle of the 16th century. It includes many chapters on folklore. For a con cise survey in a western language: Comte M. Tyszkiewicz, La Littera ture Ukrainienne (Berne, 1919) ; M. Hrushevsky, Anthologie de la litterature Ukrainienne (1921). (D. S. M.)