THE TOPOS OF THE CITY IN POSTMODERN POETRY OF UKRAINE AND THE USA

Abstract

The article focuses on the concept of city topos in the postmodern poetry of Ukraine and the USA. Great attention is paid to the system of images which is used in poetic text to express the topos.The article gives a detailed analysis of topos concept development in literature studies. The category of space and place is one of the basic categories of human idea about the structure of the world. In contemporary literary researches real place or space is not often the same as the poetic place and space. It’s often imaginary world which can be rather close to the real one or reflects it. The author always gives his own idea of world’s structure.The article is of interest to the methods and trends of topos conception development process. But special interest is peculiarities of the system of poetic images used to express and define city topos. Numerous scientific researches and articles are dedicated to the problem for today, but it’s still in a big interest of literature studies. The concept of topos has got it’s widespread contemporary literature studies.Today there are two definitions of topos which dominate in literature studies: a/ set of universal topics, state language clichés, which are typical for the national literatures; b/ meaningful place for the text ( historical period, national literature, literary trend) where some events take place. Toposes have rather stable meanings and universal constant structures. But preserving national cultural traditions toposes can change and get new topical meanings.The aim of this study is to make comparative analysis of city topos functioning in postmodern poetry of Ukraine and the USA.