The relevance of the dissertation research is due to the attention to the topological turn in the humanities, which has become a productive object of theoretical reflection of contemporary literary critics, philosophers, and cultural studies. For many centuries, from the Ancient era to the present day, theorists have been assimilating ideas and doctrines about space, including topos, as a holistic and separate system, emphasising the
individuality of the category of «space» as an authentic mode of expression. Theoretical scholars, including A. Assmann, T. Hundorova, E. Levinas, N. Maliutina, J. Polishchuk, and T. Shevchenko, focus on the spaces of lyrical and essayistic texts as a separate coordinate system with independent internal dynamics. It is about the assimilation and
coexistence of different cultural traditions and influences, different models of identity, traditions and innovation.
The relevance of the study is also due to the fact that spatial discourse represents various dynamic processes of transformation, which often result from the actual coexistence of postmodern and other trends in the literary process. The interpretation of spatial coordinates in the works of the contemporary writer V. Makhno, who is a
representative of the modernist and postmodernist movements, whose work, however, has not yet been the subject of systematic scientific comprehension in terms of topological practices, has become important and modern.
The research focuses on V. Makhno’s lyrical collections («38 virshiv pro Niu-York i deshcho inshe» «Jerusalem Poems», «Poet, okean i ryba», «Odnovitrylnyi dim») and essay collections («Kotylasia torba», «Okolytsi ta pohranychchia», «Uzdovzh okeanu na roveri», «Z holosnykh i pryholosnykh: entsyklopedychnyi slovnyk imen, mist, ptakhiv, roslyn ta usiliakoi vsiachyny»). Some of the writer’s interviews were also used as material
for the study, which is related to these collections. The subject of the study was the picture of the artist’s world through the prism of spatial coordinates presented in the above collections.
The research has revealed that space in V. Makhno’s work reflects various filled models: the outline of certain topoi, the emphasis on places becomes a plane for the exchange of cultural codes and heritage. The artist strings memories, cultural monuments, iconic places, allusions to artistic achievements, including literary texts, in space, which gives the space of an essay or lyrical text a separate and special colouring, as it becomes a
platform for reflection by the artist and his recipient. The stated problem actualises the horizon of literary research, as it expands the boundaries of space and topological reflection, identity and identification, culture, and memory. Therefore, the development and study of the worldview in the works of V. Makhno through the prism of topological
studies has become an urgent issue in contemporary Ukrainian literary studies.
It is established that the comprehension of topological themes in the works of V. Makhno, in particular in lyrical and essayistic texts, is presented primarily in the works of Ukrainian researchers, such as T. Hundorova, O. Demchuk, O. Kazanova, V. Kolkutina, S. Kocherha, V. Musiy, Y. Polishchuk, K. Silman, I. Tombulatova, T. Shadrina,
T. Shevchenko, M. Yakubovska, etc. Meanwhile, the artist’s picture of the world through the ontology of topos has not been systematically studied, especially in lyrics and essays in the comparative aspect.
The purpose of the dissertation is to study the worldview of V. Makhno, reflected in his lyric and essayistic works, from the point of view of the topological turn in literature.
In accordance with this goal, the following tasks have been defined: to substantiate the theoretical foundations and traditions of the topological turn in literature; to study the specifics of the artistic representation of the category of space in the context of lyric works and essays by V. Makhno; to analyse the relationship between already known spatial concepts and new ones in the writer's lyric and essayistic heritage, to outline the main
practices of creating a topos; to characterise the models of the worldview in the artist's eisteddfod and lyrics, focusing on the act of reflecting the subject and topos of the lyrical hero and the essayistic narrative instance; to compare the means of reflecting the picture of the world through the prism of topos in essayistic and lyrical discourses; to systematise the specifics of modelling artistic space in the author's work, represented in his collections of lyrics and essays.
