Literary Reflection of the War in the Winning Works of the Contest “Heroic Nation Creates Heroes” : Genre and Style Features

The paper deals with the genre features and stylistic trends of short prose texts presented at the Open Patriotic Festival-Contest in Kyiv Borys Hrinchenko University (June 2022). The aim is to understand the artistic features of the works by young Ukrainian authors written after February 24, 2022. The dominance of short genres is determined by the fragmentation of the world picture and the awareness of the gap between the past and the present. At the same time, the paper pays due attention to the actualization of mythological thinking based on the understanding of the metaphysical nature of war. The genre of the literary diary is undergoing a process of hybridization. The factual nature of diary entries often interacts with the genre forms of interviews, reports, and various structural modifications of the short story. The stylistic, topical, and compositional variability of the short story is examined within the context of the significant literary tradition established by Ukrainian modernism, while noticeable neo-realist and neo-populist tendencies shape the authors' pictures of the world as well. For modern authors, the relevance of populism and realism as literary systems is explained by the need for a trustworthy representation of the war events and the development of plot models that are familiar and understandable to a wide range of readers. The paper also explores ways of updating the genres of parable and vision, with which the short story actively interacts. The fantasy genre is interpreted from the perspective of postcolonial criticism. The world of fantasy, based on neo-mythological thinking, actualizes important existential problems of memory, national identity, and resentment in the modern context. Resentment as a natural reaction to the actions of the enslaver reveals its constructive nature, awakening the will to fight and win.