Drach I. The literary elitism theories (on material of the Ukrainian prose of the 20-60's of the 20th century)

The thesis investigates the origins of the idea of cultural elitism, the elitism theories as a basis for the conceptual and methodological approaches to literature creation and analysis as well as elite and mass art peculiarities. The research gives the analysis of the contemporary state of literary theoretical elitism in the Ukrainian and world literary studies. The problem of elitism of arts is extremely important in the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries, which appeared to be the age of pop culture. One of the main slogans of this period is "The art for everyone", but at the same time there are a lot of artists, scholars and critics who permanently defend "high class" (elite) art. Their ideas were the object of research. Ukrainian critics had no chance to analyze these problems until 1990. Now we deal with the concept of intellectual novel (intellectuality is considered as an elitism sign of "high" art) of the 20-40's of the 20th cent. (V. Ageeva); S. Yakovenko researches F. Nietzsche's influence in modern literary critics; T. Gundorowa and Y. Polishchuk outline the differences between popular and "high" literature. These are the first step of the literary elitism problem resolving, at the same time till now there is no complex research of the subject in the Ukrainian literary studies. The question of theories and criteria of elite literature are analyzed, but at the same time it is stressed upon the problematical nature of the delimitation of elite and mass literature diachronically. The main attention is drawn to the comprehension of elitism in modernism and postmodernism periods as a way of the possible literature stratification in the 21st century. Terminology that connected with "literary elitism" and its measures are outlined in relation to the analysis of the literary phenomena. Postmodern tendencies in culture and the opposite views that prove the importance of concepts of canon and "high" literature for the fiction maintenance and development are specified. The conclusions about the perspectives of elitism theories researches in the Ukrainian and world literary studies are made.