From the Bible to Shakespeare: Pantelejmon Kuliš (1819–97) and the Formation of Literary Ukrainian

This is the first English-language study of the translations of the Bible and Shakespeare into vernacular Ukrainian by Pantelejmon Kuliš (1819–97), a true Ukrainian maverick in the national revival of his country and a precursor of the modern understanding of Ukrainian literature. In this study, Kuliš’s translations are discussed in tandem with the time and people engaged in their assessment. As a result, the Ukrainian Bible and Shakespeare prove crucial to tracing the contours of a full and complete picture of the development of literary Ukrainian in the two historical parts of Ukraine—Galicia and Dnieper Ukraine—from the mid-nineteenth century onward.