Object - I. Franko's prose of biblical themes; purpose - a systematic analysis of biblical themes, motifs and images as source of literary dialogism, symbolism, intertextuality, archetypical imagery, metalingual semiotics of I. Franko's prose; results - The theoretical foundations of investegetions of the religious aspect of the writer's works have been analized from the point of view of the general development of philological thought, emphasizing the literary aspects of biblical interpretation of images, stories and motifs. There has been displayed the asymmetry in the history of I. Franko studies toward poetic works and the urgency of investigation of the writer's artistic interpretation of the biblical materials based on his prose. The dissertation presents arguments for the necessity of reconstruction of the cultural context of I. Franko's creative work, as well as of the importance of differentiation between the intellectual context the modern reader and biblical-Christian context of the times when Franco's novels and short stories appeared. Special attention in the thesis is devoted to the semiotic aspects of presentation of the Bible materials in the texts as well as to the linguistic aspects of Ivan Franco's works. The semantic-stylistic features and the lexical-semantic fields of different biblical concepts are presented. As a result, there have been worked out some problem-themed blocks that somehow represent stylistic trends of interpretation, reinterpretation and transformation of biblical images, themes, motifs in prosaic texts by Franko. The Christian domain of Franco's artistic interpretation of biblical symbols and parables is defined. The dissertation also presents literary analyses of the characteristic features of the autor's treatment of biblical material in the works of Ivan Franko, such as: a) the use of the Old Testament patterns for implementation of the motifs "fall", "punishment", "suffering, slavery, and death", "offering", "redemption"," purification","resurrection"; b) integration of the New Testament motifs, images and symbols to the system of the images of Franko's prosaic works by means of allusions, reminiscences, styling, masking political assessments by allegorical images, characters and scenes from the New Testament; use of specific features and realias of religious experience and spiritual practice of Ukrainian culture in order to translate implicit message-level implication or intertext.
