The Quest for Selfhood: Shakespeare’s Sonnets Interpreted by Maria Hablevych

Anna Sverediuk; Oksana Dzera

doi:10.18778/2083-8530.31.05

Authors

Anna Sverediuk Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine https://orcid.org/0009-0008-8426-6039
Oksana Dzera Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3471-0724

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.31.05

Keywords:

Ukrainian Shakespeare Studies, Maria Hablevych, reader-response theory, translation studies, Shakespeare in translation, Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Abstract

The article provides insight into the Ukrainian Shakespeare Studies criticism by presenting an overview of the approach to Shakespeare utilised by Ukrainian scholar, critic, editor, and practising translator Maria Hablevych (1950–2025). In her critical reading of Shakespeare, Hablevych uses two approaches to the text: reader-response theory and the psychoanalytical approach. The scholar perceives the complexity of the authorial self of Shakespeare, mirrored in his works, which is then reflected in her Commentaries (1998). These perspectives find their further application in the two translation projects of the Sonnets (1998 by Dmytro Pavlychko, 2011 by Natalia Butuk), in which Hablevych was involved as a critic and an editor. Both Ukrainian translations reveal different degrees of compliance with the editor’s view on Shakespeare and his Sonnets. Regarding translation as a social practice, we treat Hablevych as a multifaceted agent, namely one with a complex role in both fields of literary studies and of Translation Studies. We seek to illustrate Hablevych’s understanding and interpretation of the authorial self of the Sonnets against the postulates of reader-response theory (Iser, Ingarden, Jauss), Freud’s psychoanalysis as well as Lacan’s post-structuralist theses. We further look at their application in the Ukrainian versions of Sonnets, whose interpretation and translation were slightly (Pavlyvhko) or more distinctively (Butuk) influenced by Hablevych.

Author Biographies

Anna Sverediuk, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine

Anna Sverediuk is an Assistant Lecturer at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine. In 2025, she obtained a PhD in Philology at the Hryhorii Kochur Department of Translation Studies and Contrastive Linguistics, with a particular focus on Shakespeare Studies in Ukraine and female agents of translation. In her doctoral thesis, she aimed to bring Ukrainian Shakespeare scholars to the center stage of European academic discourse. Her scholarly interests encompass translator studies, the sociology of translation, feminist theories, and psychoanalytical studies in connection with translation studies. Currently, she is conducting research into the role of Ukrainian female translators and translation studies scholars of the late Soviet and early post-Soviet period from a postcolonial perspective. She is contributing to the collective monograph Slovo proty tini: zhinky-perekladachky v istorii ukrainskoi kultury XIX–XX stolittia [The Word Against the Shadow: Women Translators in the History of Ukrainian Culture, 19th–20th Centuries] (Creative Women Publishing, to be published in 2026).
Oksana Dzera, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine

Oksana Dzera is a Professor, Doctor Habilitatus and the Head of Hryhoriy Kochur Department of Translation Studies and Contrastive Linguistics at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine. She lectures in Translation Theory, Contrastive Lexicography, Methods of Translation Research, Strategies and Traditions of Bible Translation, and Translation and War. She is the author of the books: Ukrainian Biblical and Liturgical Translation: A Chronology (co-authored by Taras Shmiher) (2023), Bible Intertextuality and Translation: English and Ukrainian Context (2017), and co-editor of two collective monographs. Currently, she participates in Ukrainian History: Global Initiative, a major international project in the humanities and social sciences.

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