Modelling of personage’s fictional consciousness in Myroslav Irchan’s play “Radium” as a means of dramatic conflict representation
Authors:   National Centre “Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine”, Atamanchuk Viktoriia 
Published: May 2023

In the article, the specificity of the modelling of the personage’s fictional consciousness in M. Irchan’s drama “Radium” is determined by using a cognitive method, which makes it possible to trace the internal transformations of the characters through the prism of the analysis of the dramatic conflict. The relevance of the study is determined by the use of the tools of cognitive literary studies, represented by a significant number of works belonging to Ukrainian (Bovsunivska, 2010; Grebenyuk, 2016, etc.) and foreign (Fludernik, 2005, Nünning and Sommer, 2008, Palmer, 2004, etc.) researchers. The studies confirm the relevance of the application of literary cognitive science's achievements in studying drama and provide an opportunity to analyze the problems and poetics of a literary work in the context of the cognitive processes reflected by the playwright. The purpose of the article is to establish correlations between the ways of modelling the fictional consciousness of personages and the specifics of a dramatic conflictstructure, namely to determine the internal and external parameters of the personages’ fictional consciousness construction in accordance with their reactions to collisions embodied in specific episodes and situations of the drama “Radium”. The outlined problem is analyzed on the basis of the following interpretation of the concept of fictional consciousness: “the fictional consciousness of a personage appears in the form constructed by the author ability of the hero to perceive internal and external realities in complexes and systems of their correlations, which leads to the formation of a network of defined meanings, which determines the identity and actions of the personage within a fictional world" (Atamanchuk, 2020, p. 115). Modelling of the fictional consciousness of the personages in M. Irchan’s dramatic works is largely determined by the reproduction of various interactions in the social environment. The play “Radium” (“Poison”, 1928) has the characteristics of a social and political drama: the conflict of the literary work concerns important aspects of the protagonists’ lives; the opposition of characters has a different worldview basis (protection of workers’ and businessmen’ interests); the development of the action is aimed at revealing the hidden causes of the unsatisfactory situation of the workers and establishing justice. The conflict in the drama unfolds in the social plane and in the plane of the fictional consciousness of the characters. In the social plane, there is a struggle between the poor and the rich; in the worldview plane, there is a confrontation between personages with different levels of fictional consciousness and different systems of axiological coordinates. The level of fictional consciousness of the protagonists and their inner content in the drama “Radium” by M. Irchan is reconstructed on the basis of the externally motivated actions of the characters, their roles and positions in the unfolding of the dramatic conflict. In the drama, the fictional consciousness of the protagonists is outlined through their outwardly expressed reactions in the form of actions, stated aspirations, goals, interpersonal and social interactions, etc., to which elements of reflection are added, testifying to the partial ability of the heroes to detach themselves from situations and consider them in a detached perspective by understanding and rethinking or being involved in the process as active personages. Ideological determinants define the programming of the images of the characters. In the play “Radium” the fictional consciousness of the personages is depicted through the reproduction of internal tensions, which appear as indicators of external vicissitudes of fate, and the stylistics of expressionism determines the aggravation of the reflected processes in the fictional consciousness of the heroes.