AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND AUTOCONFESSION IN UKRAINIAN AND JAPANESE WOMEN'S LITERATURE

Abstract

In this article, the author broadens the scope of autobiography and confessionality within Ukrainian and Japanese feminine literature, introducing approach to the comparative analysis of female portrayals across these two bodies of literature. The discourse illuminates key aspects of autobiography and confession in the life and oeuvre of Higuchi Ichiyo (樋口一葉), specifically in works such as “The Thirteenth Night”, “The Flow”; as well as in the contributions of authors from the “Women's Education Magazin”, including Miyake Kaho (三宅花圃), Wakamatsu Shizuko (若松賤子), Shimizu Shikin (清水紫琴), Kitada Usurai (北田薄氷), alongside Ukrainian writers like Olga Kobilyanska, Evgeniya Yaroshinska, Ulyana Kravchenko, among others. The author's conceptualization of female characters underscores diverse facets of literary character development, paying particular attention to the emotional states, the complexity of the heroines, and fostering an appreciation for their autobiographies, sensitivity, trauma, auto-reflexivity, and self-expression. These characters are self-identified through the widely recognized dichotomy of “Self – Other” viewed through the heroines’ perception of action. This approach evaluates the functionality of female images in Ukrainian and Japanese literature, offering a detailed examination of the autobiographical and confessional dimensions. Through the prism of the heroines' perception of reality, the study contemplates the functionality and multifaceted nature of female images in Ukrainian and Japanese literatures. The author has chosen autobiographism and confessionalism in Ukrainian and Japanese female literatures as the aim of the exploration. The peculiarities of the creation of female images in Japanese and Ukrainian literatures have been selected as the object of research. Comparativehistorical, cultural-historical, typological, descriptive, imagological methods, analysis of literary work have been chosen among the methods. The results of the research allows to conclude that performing an analysis and comprehension of the autobiographism and confessionalism in Ukrainian and Japanese female prose, considering the role and significance of those two elements in the said literatures, as well as the ways of their implementation in the artistic texts of Ukrainian and Japanese female writers, we can consider them connected. The consideration of female prose allows to trace the features of creative disclosure of personal “Self” through confessionalism, emotionality, with the aspiration for self-realization. Based on a comparative analysis of the works and historical background, the specificity of Japanese and Ukrainian female prose writing is established. The article attempts to investigate the typological analogies and differences of female figures of the “transitional period” (Japanese meijiishin 明治維新) in Ukrainian and Japanese literatures based on comparative analysis. It allowed to more broadly reveal the atmosphere of the transcultural life of the specified era.