SUMMARY:

This essay is part of the thematic bloc discussing the significant contributions to the field of Ukrainian studies in North America made by three eminent Ukrainian scholars born in 1919: Omeljan Pritsak, Iurii Lutskii (George Stephen Nestor Luckyj), and Ivan Lysiak Rudnytsky. Examining George Luckyj’s influence on the development of Ukrainian literature studies in the West, the author discusses Luckyj’s role as the reformer of Slavic studies in Canada and creator of the teaching program in Ukrainian literature at the University of Toronto. Luckyj was a prolific author of scholarly monographs on Ukrainian literature and cultural history. In particular, his pioneering English-language studies of the historical evolution of Ukrainian literary culture during the crucial period of forging a modern society from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth century played a crucial role in the formation and legitimization of Ukrainian studies at North American universities. At the same time, Luckyj’s interests were not confined to Ukrainian topics but extended to the broader field of Russian and Slavic studies. It was said that his research of nineteenth-century Ukrainian literary culture was a contribution at least as important to Russian literature as to Ukrainian.