IVANNIKOVA LIUDMYLA 2024

IVANNIKOVA LIUDMYLA

а Ph.D. in Philology, an associate professor, a senior research fellow at Ukrainian and Foreign Folkloristics Department of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine).

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0617-5082

Ivannikova, L. (2024) Glorification Speech of a Modern Funeral: Tradition of the Urban Culture. Slavic World, 23, 183–217.

A practice of proclamation improvised farewell, graveside and memorial speeches exists in urban culture in the context of a funeral ritual. They are heard during the funeral and at the memorial dinner. This is especially typical for the funerals of Ukrainian intelligentsia and fallen military personnel. These commemorative texts are characteristic exclusively for the tradition of urban culture, which has deep genetic roots. Such improvised speeches in the urban tradition have functionally replaced the performance of funeral songs and psalms, and partly laments. They reflect traditional worldviews about the afterlife and the soul of the deceased. All this determines the relevance of the folkloristic study of such texts.

Scientific novelty. The commemorative texts of funeral and memorial ritual complex of the city’s traditional culture have become the subject of scientific research for the first time in Ukrainian folkloristics. These are individual improvised speeches dedicated to funerals and memorial days.

The purpose of the study is to carry out a scientific folkloristic analysis of the above-mentioned commemorative texts, to trace their genesis, structure, semantics and pragmatics, terminology, genre features, connection with oral folk tradition.

Research methods. The methods of included observation, the interview, descriptive-analytical, comparative-historical, historical-genetic and structural-typological, functional and interdisciplinary methods are used in the article.

The source base consists of both the authoress’s own records and observations of the late 20th and early 21st centuries during city funerals and memorial services as well as the materials from social networks.

Conclusions. Having analyzed historical sources, the authoress is concluding that the lamentation and communicative tradition coexist in Ukrainian everyday life. The sources indicate the differentiation of rural and urban funeral culture. The practice of delivering oral improvised funeral and memorial speeches is one of the forms of commemoration, typical for the city exclusively. Semantically these texts are on the border between folklore, oral history and individual creativity. In the urban tradition they functionally replace laments, with which they have a genetic and typological relationship. Individual improvisation, common pragmatics, namely the functions of mourning, farewell, communication with the deceased, commemoration, reassurance, informative and consolidating are considered to be common features of these genres.

Signs of the folklore of commemorative textsinclude oral improvisation, reflection of traditional worldviews and mental stereotypes; affinity with folklore prose ‑ memoirs, fables, stories, folk tales, heroic legends; inclusion of folklore motifs typical for the funeral tradition; use of traditional folklore formulas, ritual language and ritual texts; presence of elements of idealization, heroization and mythologizing of the deceased. The glorification of the hero’s feat and patriotic pathos bring commemorative speeches closer to the heroic epic and laudatory folklore.

The tradition of eulogy delivering or reading speeches during a funeral has been known already in Cossack times, and is actualized in the second half of the 19th century, in particular, during Taras Shevchenko funeral and reburial in Ukraine. Hence the custom of reading or orally reciting speeches and poems during the funeral of prominent Ukrainian figures has spread. The pragmatics of public speeches at the funerals of prominent Ukrainians is different. In the 19th–21st centuries they have become a form of protest against Russian autocracy, a manifestation of Ukrainianness, a means of awakening national consciousness and consolidating the Ukrainian nation, a means of fighting for a United Conciliar Independent Ukraine.

Keywords: modern urban funeral, commemorative text, grieving, commemoration, improvised speeches.

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