Tetiana Kalytenko

The political and literary histories of Ukraine and Finland bear a surprising number of similarities, particularly in their struggles under imperial domination and the revival of national identity through culture and literature. The first half of the nineteenth century became one of the key and decisive periods for both literatures. 1835 saw the first publication of Elias Lönnrot’s Kalevala; Taras Shevchenko’s Kobzar appeared in its first edition five years later. As prominent examples of Romanticism, both books became prime examples of their respective literary languages, the national myths worked into them by their authors experienced a revival, and both, in the end, had significant impacts on art in the succeeding years. Tetiana Kalytenko’s current project emphasizes the possibility of studying two classical texts through a comparative, postcolonial lens, focusing on Kobzar and Kalevala as texts that made a significant contribution to the development of national Ukrainian and Finnish myths and narratives. The outcomes of this research are expected to contribute to deepening the topic and constructing new interpretations and methodologies in the literary realm, which will unite two cultures that are geographically distant but close in spirit.