Interpretive Portrait of Taras Shevchenko in the Format of Modern Media Culture

We are talking about a kind of “embodiment” of the image of a Ukrainian classic in modern media text. We are considering examples of contemporary popular media culture, transforming the image of Taras Shevchenko. Advertising is one of the genres of modern mass culture that actively reformats literature, including and Shevchenko’s canon. For the most part, Shevchenko’s image is embodied in the so-called social advertising. Its purpose and objective is to proclaim and strengthen moral, ethical, aesthetic values of the Ukrainian people through the image of Kobzar. It is symptomatic that the next input of Taras Shevchenko’s image in the socio-political context takes place at the time of the Orange Revolution and during Euromaidan. This update is based primarily on harmony of Kobzar’s value orientations with those of modern Ukrainian society: fellowship, freedom, patriotism ? these are the key programs upon which the dialogue of generations is build. The image of the classic is embodied in various forms of popular media culture, actualizing a kind of dialogue with the classic via language of the recipient. The embodiment of Taras Shevchenko’s image in the new art forms actively takes place in urban literary topos. A new form of modern pop art, which is called for embodying the image of the classic, is the so-called digital painting. A whole block of modern media texts is being created under the laws of the postmodern game with program irony, parody and pastiche. Another kind of transfer of classical paradigm through the media language is the creation of literary works based on original literary works (fanfic). Members of Taras Shevchenko’s fandom diversely reassess Kobzar’s image as a personality. The examples considered here motivate the modern receptive “Shevchenko’s portrait”. Numerous examples of popular literature through the game, intertextual and intermedial techniques, parody and others involved in the creation of a new myth. This myth can be called ?Our Shevchenko”, it becomes a sign and evidence of continuous dialogue between classics and the present.