Tyshchenko, A. The image of flâneur in Ukrainian and Spanish prose of the late nineteenth - first half of the twentieth century. – Qualified research work (manuscript).
Dissertation to obtain the scientific degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the field 03 “Humanities”, specialty 035 “Philology” . – National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Kyiv, 2023.
Modern culture and outlook were formed in a predominantly urban environment that dictated new forms of interaction between individuals. The city became the center of economic, political, and creative activity, where new practices of human life were created, among which flânerie is worth highlighting. A flâneur is a city explorer, an artist who transforms the impressions he receives on the streets into art. For a long time, flâneur practices of urban exploration were analyzed purely as a phenomenon of French culture. However, modernization processes, including cultural ones, were so widespread that their influence spread to other European countries. Therefore, researchers of culture, and literature in particular, are beginning to actualize the type of flâneur in the context of national literatures and in comparative studies in order to explore in more detail the worldview breakdown of the end of the century through the analysis of urban practices.
The result of the work on the thesis text is a comparative analysis of the image of the flâneur in literary texts, in particular prose texts of Ukrainian and Spanish literature, with the subsequent determination of the peculiarities of practices of flânerie in them. To study this issue, the comparative method of research was chosen, involving theoretical works on urban studies (A. Lefebvre, M. de Certeau), texts of identity studies (L. Donskis) and memory studies (P. Nora, A. Assman), the developments of gender studies (V. Ageeva, J. Wolf, G. Pollock, E. Wilson, J.Butler, M. Kimmel), and biographical and historical and literary commentary.The study analyzes prose texts of the modern period, which also give an idea of the gender discourse of flânerie, on the basis of which an attempt can be made to formulate general trends in flâneur’s discourse in the first third of the twentieth century, which creates a scientific novelty of the research.
The thesis is organized into two chapters and a conclusion. The first chapter of the research provides an overview of the theoretical discourse of flânerie, which dates back to the second half of the nineteenth century. In the literary discourse, the flâneur appears in an 1841 publication, in the text Physiology of the Flâneur by Louis Adrien Huart. Huart was the first author to describe a new urban type inherent in modern culture.The classic models of flânerie by Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin also originate from this text, and they begin to reflect on the flâneur of the modern era, which is not only a carrier of detailed facts about the city, but also collects impressions and transforms them into objects of art.
A further analysis of the theoretical discourse in the first section of the chapter shows that in the early 2010s, the use of classic texts on flânerie was already being subjected to a certain rethinking. In particular, in the collection of texts by Richard Wrigley's initiative entitled The Flaneur Abroad: Historical and International Perspectives, in which the authors are already trying to expand the geography of flanerie. The type of flâneuse is also being rethought by researchers of gender studies. The paper analyzes the debate between Janet Wolf, Griselda Pollock, and Elizabeth Wilson about the accessibility of urban spaces for women in the modern era, and, accordingly, the cultural and social grounds for the existence of the flâneuse. The thesis reviews the most relevant contemporary sources of the author's work: Catherine Nesci, Lauren Elkin, and Ana Maria Iglesias, who continue to explore the problem of female flânerie in different cultural and historical contexts.
The research concludes with the results of the comparative analysis of the texts, outlines the main trends in the formation of the flâneur discourse in Spanish and Ukrainian literature, and identifies the prospects for further research on the topic.
Keywords: Comparative studies, flâneur, flânerie, modernism, Ukrainian literature, Spanish literature, gender discourse, literary criticism, autobiography, identity, urbanism, motif, reader, territory.
