The Genre of “Sensational Novel” in the Ukrainian Immigrant Literature

The literary process of the Ukrainian immigration is a special segment of Ukrainian culture and shows an “alternative way” in the development of literature. The purpose of this article is to study the specifications of sensational novels in the Ukrainian immigrant literature. The literary genre “sensational novel” appeared in Great Britain in the second half of the XIX century. These novels typologically descend from another popular Victorian genre ? gothic fiction. Later they transformed into detectives and thrillers. The Ukrainian writers and critics used this term as a marker of any action novel with elements of adventures or crime investigations, or even science-fiction. Thus the term “sensational novel” was used to define such works as “The Petrijs and the Dovbushchuks” by I. Franko, “Doctor Caccioni” by H. Zhurba, “The mystery of the Red embassy” by Y. Bohenskyi etc. Most of the so-called “sensational novels” in the Ukrainian postwar immigrant literature were represented by the spy novels of B. Polianych and Z. Donchuk. The “Dictionary of literary studies” (2007), edited by R. Hromiak, presents sensational novel as a subgenre of the adventurous novel, noting that “it contains an event or message, which produces a strong impression”. As we can see, this criterion is not enough to use “sensational novel” as a fully functional term in relation to the spy and adventurous novels, written by Ukrainian immigrant authors. But it still can be a marker of a special modification of texts which main function was to make literature more popular among the immigrants.