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The Ethnology Notebooks. 2025. № 4 (184), 990—1003

UDK[398.22(=161.2)-055.2:355.01(477)”20″](092):801.7/.8

DOI https://doi.org/10.15407/

TEXTUALIZATION OF THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVE «ABOUT THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR»: PECULIARITIES OF THE PRE-FOLKLORIZATION PROCESS

KUZMENKO Oksana

  • ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0512-6388
  • Doctor of Science in Philology 
  • (Ph.D. in Folklore Studies), Senior Scholar,
  • Leading Research Associate 
  • of the Department of Social Anthropology 
  • The Ethnology Institute of the
  • National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine,
  • 15, Svobody Avenue, 79000, Lviv, Ukraine,
  • Contacts: е-mail: kuzmenko.oksana@gmail.com

Abstract. Introduction. Oral autobiographical narratives and testimonies describing the crisis life experience of the «beginning» of the Russian-Ukrainian war constitute invaluable primary source material. This material forms the basis for generating crucial socio-political knowledge regarding the contemporary new type of warfare, and also serves as an object for folkloristic research into the peculiarities of the Ukrainian narrative tradition’s functioning. The creation of a collective metanarrative about the war is an integral component of the national intangible cultural heritage.

The relevance of this study is substantiated by the need to investigate the factors influencing the formulation of oral narratives, drawing upon the accounts of Ukrainian women migrants and internally displaced people. These accounts serve as the foundation for folklore narratives about the war, recorded under conditions of high trust between the narrator and the listener. 

The article aims to elucidate the specific features of the textualization of wartime everyday life in a woman’s narrative, specifically one who remained in Ukraine. 

The main objectives are: to identify the narrative scheme of the autobiographical female narrative; to assess the amplitude of the interviewer’s influence on the completeness of content and the poetics of the narrative, considering the peculiarities of verbal interaction and co-creation. The source base for the article comprises field material: three interview transcripts, the audio recordings of which were made by the author during March 2022 and July 2023. 

The theoretical and methodological foundation of the study includes semantic-structural analysis, narrative analysis of personal autobiographical narrative, the interview method, participant observation, autoethnography, and comparative analysis. The primary factors of textuality that most characterize the manner of (co-)creation of oral narratives about the war are situationality, self-censorship, and subjectivity.

Keywords: oral narrative, Russian-Ukrainian war, autobiographical narrative, women’s war memory, context, own/stranger, textualization, folklorization, intangible cultural heri tage.

Received 20.06.2025

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