HELENA KAPEŁUŚ UKRAINIAN STUDIES

Abstract

The article is devoted to the comparative studies by Professor Helena Kapełuś, a famous Polish literary scholar and folklorist of the second half of the 20th century. The Institute of Literary Criticism of the Polish Academy of Sciences (she headed Folk Literature Department there) was constantly supporting scientific cooperation with folklorists and Slavists from M. Rylsky Institute for Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Helena Kapełuś’ scientific interests always included Ukrainian studies. Exploring Polish and Ukrainian ethnocultural borderlands, she focused on the figures of Zorian Dołęga-Chodakowski, Żegota Pauli and Oskar Kolberg and their academic works. It was no accident that Viktoriia Yuzvenko, Helena Kapełuś, Ryszard Górski and Ryszard Wojciechowski planned to issue all the works by Zorian Dołęga-Chodakowski and Ukrainian volumes by Oskar Kolberg. The Oskar Kolberg Institute in Poznań was also given great importance.

The article emphasizes that Helena Kapełuś partnered with Anton Serednicki (the well-known translator and editor of the annual Ukrainian Calendar in Poland), as well as with the Ukrainian language edition Our Culture. A lot of her Ukrainian studies have been published in Ukrainian namely in these Polish editions.

Helena Kapełuś considered the both peoples’ common heritage in the context of cultures dialogue, thus contributing to the development of Ukrainian and Polish cultural and scientific relations. Therefore, the role of Ukrainian studies in folkloristic activity and scientific work of this researcher deserves to be examined comprehensively.