The thesis is dedicated to the study of the individual authorial style of Vasyl Stefanyk, his artistic method, as observed through the prism of genologic analysis of the importance of the dramaturgic categories within the system of artistic thinking of the writer and in the context of the cultural and historic, literary and artistic processes of the end of XIX – beginning of the XX centuries. The outlined period is extremely rich and notable in the aspect of Ukrainian writership, therefore the role and place of Vasyl Stefanyk as the "biggest artist" and an "absolute master of form", according to Ivan Franko, in the national literary process has both aesthetic and historic value. The artistic work of the author did not only erupt to the surface the imminent laws and patterns, due to which the development of the world and national literature occurred, but it also became a distinct reference point and example of the individual preference of the genre and stylistic "options", both for the contemporaries and for the followers, for the admirers of the similar ideology and aesthetics, means of artistic depiction. It is also important to find out the correlations of the Stefanyk's inclination towards making epos dramaturgic with the tendencies in development of the world literary process of the end of XIX – beginning of the XX centuries.
The first chapter of the thesis tells about the problem of genre diffusion being one of the most relevant in modern genre science. Practically every thorough researcher in the field of generics had to touch upon some of its aspects. In particular, in the works of the Ukrainian and foreign scientists – I.Denysiuk, N.Kopystianska, T.Bovsunivska, N.Shumylo, N.Kalynychenko, T.Gundorova, S.Khorob, V.Myroniuk, F.Biletskiy, A.Tkachenko, M.Kodak, N.Maftyn, A.Chernysh, N.Bernadska, R.Sendyka, M.Bakhtin, T.Todorov and others. In the generics itself there are two opposite but dialectically connected tendencies that determine the relevance of studying the phenomenon of genre diffusion. On the one hand, this is creating the objective prerequisites for developing the hybrid forms in the modern literary process. On the other hand – it is the necessity for canonization, "legalization" of these forms in the refreshed "register" of the literary "grades". The majority of the scientists agree that the typology of genres according to genus was only adhered to in classicism with its requirement for the purity and canonic literary forms, and in such literary streams as romanticism, realism, modernism, the genres emerge on the crossroads of lyric, epos and drama.
The study of the problems of dramaturgy in the literary and artistic studies discourse requires clear differentiation and identification of the semantic fields of the notions of "drama", "dramaturgy", "dramatism", "theatrical" and "scene". Concerning the very term dramaturgic, noting its polysemantic and contextual determination, we mainly mean its nominative inclination to depict the poetics of dramaturgic text as a whole and stylistic mastery in particular. Therefore, one of its universal definitions is "a system of expressive means of dramaturgy as a type of art" (K.Polishchuk). A derivative from such understanding of dramaturgic is a view on its structural components, which the researchers see in a "special development of the conflict, in building up the intrigue. in the specificity of "building" the scene and characters' peculiarities, their appearance and actions" (M.Fedotova); in an image, character, plot, motif, implication, unity, harmony (G.Klochek), etc.
