The paper considers the demonstrative aspects of intertext in the prose by Valerii Shevchuk and focuses on the peculiarities of the works’ interaction with the Bible, mythology, and literature, which takes place at the level of different forms and types of intertext. Particular attention is paid to revealing the specifc ‘dialogue’ of V. Shevchuk’s works with their pretexts — hagiography, autobiographical and diary’s literature of Baroque. ɒ e examples discussed testify to the depth and ramifications of the intertextual dialogue in the writer’s prose, reveal the intellectual, philosophical, and elitist nature of his texts. A dialogue with the Bible, mythology, world and Ukrainian literature in the works by V. Shevchuk unfolds in the form of open and hidden quotations, allusions, reminiscences. These details aim at deepening the representation of ideas and themes, forming the subtexts, interpreting images. The writer creates a new artistic form — metatext — mainly through the reinterpretation of the pretexts, among which the works of the Baroque period (poetic, autobiographical, diary genres) and hagiography dominate. Transforming the pretexts at the level of contents, plot, genre, time and space, narrative, V. Shevchuk expands them with monologues, dialogues, descriptions, and details. In the process of interpreting prototexts, the writer resorts to modeling original images, in the context of which he actualizes some worldview points, reveals important moral, ethical, and philosophical problems. Allowing the perception of his work as a ‘textual game’, the writer, at the same time, does not reduce the role of intertext to the level of intellectual play. Intertext becomes a peculiar way of continuing the literary discourses of the past in a dialogue with them. They become re-read, ‘supplemented’ and thus brought once again into the continuous process of forming culture.
‘Text as condenser of cultural memory’: intertextual space of Valerii Shevchuk’s prose