The novelty of the thesis lies in the fact that it is the first attempt at systemic research into the features of architectonic and semantic text transformation, wrought by the use of erasure technique in constrained writing in Ukrainian literary studies. Currently, numerous practices of erasure exist, such as: erasing, painting over, obscuring, blacking out and dimming. In the thesis erasure is defined as any conscious and rationalized exclusion of parts from the original text in order to create a new architectonic and semantic verbal unity. The thesis argues that erasure should be categorized as a technique rather than method or genre, and this technique is one of the means of creating art in constrained writing. The topicality of developing and refining the analysis methodology of phenomena in constrained writing is seen throughout domestic philological research. This is particularly true concerning the practical application of the erasure technique, which is almost entirely unexplored in Ukrainian literary studies.
In this research, architectonics is understood as the organized general entirety of a text and work of art, which is reached by harmonious connections between content and form components. The review of the specific features of development and further evolution of ideas concerning architectonics was conducted in the diachronic aspect, which proves the universality of this concept.
It was determined that the intentional use of erasure as a technique starts in the postmodern era. The thesis established genetic relations between the rise of this technique use, concrete poetry, and the activity of the Oulipo group. The authors, who adhered to the constrictive writing concept and use of erasure technique, strived to investigate the potential of the word in its architectonic and semantic combinatorics. Thus occurred the joining of seemingly incompatible things: mathematics and poetry, frivolous play and exhausting work, the serious and the funny, as new contexts and senses were born due to architectonic collisions.
The thesis argues that certain circumstances facilitate the successful functioning of constrained writing and the use of erasure technique. The most significant among them are:
1) the mandatory existence of the original text (source, hypotext);
2) the conduction of operations to forge the architectonic and semantic changes of the source text;
3) experimental and creative activity of the postmodern author;
4) the presence of communicative intellectual play;
5) the cultivation of architectonic complications of the text leading to its semantic enrichment.
Architectonic and semantic text updating is stimulated through the embodiment of conceptual foundations of constrictive writing and erasure technique. Texts created according to a limited set of predetermined rules become the result of an author’s activities. The requirements can restrict or ban the use of listed means and enforce rigid formal or sense conditions. Nevertheless, the adherence to the set restrictions is voluntary. The author accepts them without external (causal) pressure. The restrictions are defined before the creation of the text starts and become a choice aimed at the actualization and deautomation of the verbal material.
The expressiveness of the new works of art that appear due to erasure cannot be viewed solely as the result of visual effects. The erasure technique involves the activation of both implicit and explicit components. The processes of coding and decoding of information are accompanied by intensification of gamification. Due to the erasure of parts of the source text, signs of intermediality, intertextuality, hypertextuality, convergence and multiculturalism are shaped in the new text.
The thesis consists of an introduction, four chapters, conclusions, references and annexes. The first chapter focuses on such basic concepts as architectonics and constrained writing. The second chapter is dedicated to the detailed elucidation of the erasure technique, namely, its definition is provided, classification of its various manifestations is offered, the overview of academic works on erasure is done. The third chapter delineates the shaping of erasure poetics in the general context of literary postmodernism as it evolved over the final third of the 20th century. The fourth chapter outlines the features that accompany transformation of erasure in American literature in the early 21st century.
