CULTUROLOGICAL ASPECT OF PHILOLOGICAL STUDIES OF V.M. PERETS

Abstract

The modern formation of culturology has attracted attention to ideas and theories that combine scientific character, cultural and historical importance, and spiritual value.

The in-depth analysis of the works of scientists that have made a considerable contribution to the cultural heritage research became relevant. Thus, a considerable contribution to the development of artistic potential and the scientific environment, from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, was made by a doctor of Russian philology, academician, an outstanding scientist, researcher and pedagogue Volodymyr Mykolayovych Perets. The studies of his scientific works were fulfilled only in the philological direction and did not cover the culturological aspect. Therefore, the aim of this article is to cover the scientific heritage of V.M. Perets and most of all, its culturological aspect. The scientific works of a researcher represent an element of spiritual wealth, and by studying them one can determine the meaning of cultural heritage in the world-process of humankind development, and comprehend the cultural and historical dynamics of development.

The studies of the works of V.M. Perets are significant for most humanities, that is explained both by the versatile character of the activity of the scientist and the progress of the integration of science.

The scientific field of the researcher included philology, the study of literature, the source study, the textual study, paleography, archeology, the study of folklore and the history of art. The works of V.M. Perets and his scientific followers represent an example of the interdisciplinary approach to the studies of cultural heritage. The peculiarity of his scientific style was manifested in the ability to combine different approaches and methods of research, such as literary, historical, philosophical and that of art. Such academic versatility allowed the scientist to go beyond philology and advance within the framework of adjoining scientific studies of humanities that at the end of the 20th century brought about the formation of a new branch of science, culturology.

Humankind strived to reflect the world view and the understanding of its essence in folklore, language, religion, literature and art. The very versatility of the forms of manifestation of human conscience formed the basis of the research work of the outstanding scientist.

V.M. Perets studied the sources (folklore, literature, art) as the form of the manifestation of creativity of people and as the object of research that reflects the cultural versatility of the activity of people, i.e. art, language, religious and philosophical views, way of life, customs, traditions – everything created by the hands and minds of people which in turn represent the subject of culture. The comprehension of it helps to understand more deeply and more completely the specificity of the cultural whole. At the same time, the academician expressed his own vision of the factual material and made the interpretation of the source, creating a new process of the expression of human conscience and the manifestation of creative activity, embodied in form, enriching the cultural heritage of humankind. This is how the mechanism of preservation of culture functions, being at the same time the element of culture and the means of its transmission.

The scientist emphasized the necessity of deep understanding of the nature of text as the general cultural value that bears the imprint of human thought, implementing it into the world of social communication, and defining it as the subject of intercultural dialogue. This way, the texts are an immediate object of his analysis, the sources that reflect the wholeness of the cultural, historical, ethnocultural, spiritual, moral, social and mental aspect of culture. The output categories of the culturological analysis were basic: "meaning" as certain content, "text" as the exterior form of its expression and "interpretation" as the way of perception of the former and the latter. Studying the sources of the ancient literature, V.M. Perets used the essential principles of the cultural semantics for "decoding" and reconstruction of cultural objects as the texts that carry the semantic load.

V.M. Perets viewed literature in its cultural and historical context. Hence it is possible to say that the culturological aspect of the philological studies of V.M. Perets consists of the historical studying of cultural dynamics and the culture of the human nation, embodied in spiritual values (language, literature, art) and expressed with the help of symbols and forms.

The wholeness of the cultural world is reflected in the texts by the versatility of the phenomena, included to the notion of culture in the context of their correlation and interaction. Thus, studying objects, the scientist resorted to generalization, complexity and versatility of the approach to the comprehension of literary phenomena. The integrated use of the methods of scientific cognition let him combine strictly historical and imaginary interpretative approaches in the analysis of the objects, synthesis of the historically authentic factual material and its perception and interpretation.

He viewed the semantic content of the units of language in the context with the ethnocultural contents because the structure and the meaning of the words carry specific values that reflect the peculiarity and the uniqueness of the national community. Thus the scientist put forward the idea of the historical correlation of the dialogue of cultures and cultural succession. Being against the isolation of cultures, the researcher proved the thesis about their interaction as the fundamental factor of cultural versatility. Every single literary monument was foremost the documentary proof of historical progress, the phenomenon that showed the spiritual contents of the epoch, its technical and artistic achievements.

Thus, summing up the aforementioned, we can make a conclusion that the activity of V.M. Perets was directed towards the development of culture and involved search, collection, research, and transmission and popularization of cultural values. At the same time, the personality of the scientist appeared as the figure of the researcher of the manifestations of cultural versatility, as well as the figure of their creator. Studying the works of the historical past, V.M. Perets discovered the unknown or little known phenomena, facts from the history of culture, including the works of ancient Ukrainian literature. He brought into scientific-use numerous facts from history and the theory of literary criticism, and pointed out the problems and perspectives of the development of literature in the context of a single stage and a single style of art. He filled the cultural space of that time with scientific facts and sources that in their turn brought to the understanding of culture as the manifestation of creativity that found its reflection in different works of art, literature, and esthetical preferences. This very direction became critical at the early stage of the study of Ukrainian culture. Thanks to his achievements, V.M. Perets made the preservation of the best scientific traditions and cultural monuments the main aim of his activity. Thus, the scientific genius and encyclopaedical knowledge of the scientist favoured the development of the humanities and his works made a great contribution to the understanding of culture and the formation of a new branch of science.