Author Biography
Oleksandr Bilec’kyj (1884-1961) was a leading expert in Ukrainian poetry and theatre, as well as in Comparative Literature. He graduated at Charkiv University in 1907. He subsequently taught at Charkiv University, Kyjiv University and in Soviet times he received a position as a researcher at the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, where he became the director of the Literature Institute at the end of the Thirties. In the Twenties, he began to publish his important articles about new trends in Ukrainian poetry, presenting for the first time from a critic’s point of view such leading figures as Maksym Ryl’s’kyj and Pavlo Tyčyna. He was one of the first scholars who analyzed the specificity of Ukrainian literature in the broader context of world history and culture. His theoretical works were a fundamental basis for the development of contemporary Ukrainian studies.