Matkovska I. Zora Neale Hurston's Novels in the Context of African-American Women Literature

The thesis is the first complex, integrated interdisciplinary study of Zora Neale Hurston's novels in the Ukrainian literary studies. The dissertation aims at defining the role of Zora Neale Hurston's novels in African-American women literature, and defining the place of the writer's creative work in the wider multicultural context, considering basic aesthetic and philosophical line in Huston's fiction. The object of the thesis is the whole set of writer's seven novels. The narrative strategies of speakerly text - free indirect discourse - form the truly unique tool of Huston's style. Huston's poetics is also characterized by abundant use of black vernacular. The incorporation of African-American musical motifs (blues in particular) in her novels is an example of intertexual literary tradition in Black women literature. The completed research defines the outlooks for continued study of Huston's individual discourse and Black women literature on the whole.