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    Published : 2026-10-07
    Vol. 74 No. 7 (2026)

    Childhood in the Conditions of War: The War Discourse of Western Ukrainian Short Prose of the Early 20th Century

    Alla Shvets

    https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5612-8420

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rh26747.2

    Abstract

    This article examines the literary representations of children and childhood in Western Ukrainian prose about the First World War. The focus is on novellas by Olha Kobylianska, Nataliya Kobrynska, Vasyl Stefanyk, Marko Cheremshyna, Katrya Hrynevychivna, Olha Duchyminska, Mariyka Pidhiryanka and Bohdan Lepky. In these texts, the child appears not only as a victim of catastrophe but also as an active participant in the wartime world, reacting to danger, developing strategies of survival and shaping a new perspective of the experience of war. Childhood emerges as a space of affective and sensory reactions, playful imitations, the experience of the loss of home, exile and orphanhood, as well as a vehicle for transgenerational memory. Particular attention is paid to the poetics of representing the child, based on sensory details, metaphors of trauma, the ritualisation of play and the symbolism of rebirth. Ultimately, the representations of children in the wartime narrative simultaneously demonstrate a traumatised childhood and embody a humanistic potential, making the child a symbol of life and hope.

    Keywords:

    affective behaviour, transgenerational trauma, loss of home, imitation of adults, orphanhood, death, humanism



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    Roczniki Humanistyczne · ISSN 0035-7707 | eISSN 2544-5200 | DOI: 10.18290/rh
    © The Learned Society of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin & The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Faculty of Humanities

    Articles are licensed under a Creative Commons  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)