Encyclopedia man: Mykola Sumtsov as an author of encyclopedic publications

Abstract

Purpose: to study Kharkiv University Professor, philologist, folklorist, ethnographer, museum worker Mykola Fedorovych Sumtsov’s (1854–1922) publications in the issues of the «Encyclopaedic Dictionary», the «New Encyclopaedic Dictionary» and some other encyclopaedic dictionaries of the end of the XIXth – the beginning of the XXth centuries.

Research methodology: the principles of historism and objectiveness implied by means of using special historical methods such as chronological and retrospective ones.

Novelty. For the first time we suggest a general characteristics of the whole massive of M.F. Sumtsov’s articles published in encyclopaedic publications. We highlighten the scientist’s  innovations both in the field of scientific biographistics and in non-trivial choice of dictionary articles on folkloristics and ethnography; emphasise his role as a researcher and populariser of Ukrainian Literature and Slavic Humanities figures’ achievements.

Topicality. The importance and topicality of this research is grounded by the very personality of M.F. Sumtsov – the scientist who stood at the foundations of Ukrainian Studies as a science. Analysing his publications in the best encyclopaedic isues of the end of the XIXth – the beginning of the XXth centuries, we see for sure that the Ukrainian ethnographer and folklorist not only summarised his colleagues’ achievements in studying traditional Ukrainian culture but also suggested a system of significant notions, artefacts and phenomena which only in a hundred of years would become basical in our native ethnolinguistic encyclopaedic dictionaries. Besides we note the scientist’s priority in creating a huge database of scientific biographies of both native and foreign science and culture figures.

Conclusions. We have studied to a certain degree forgotten, non-collected and almost non-investigated by ethnographers, folklorists and literature historians encyclopaedic legacy of Academician M.F. Sumtsov, which has not lost its topicality both from historical point of view and in the sense of looking for new methodological approaches to studying traditional folk culture. As for his latest bibliography (1999) there are 254 articles in just encyclopaedic dictionaries and not fewer than that can be found in the issues which formally are not encyclopaedic but have all the features of such ones. M. Sumtsov was one of the pioneers in the field of studying Old Ukrainian Literature and it was he who supplied XVI–XVIII centuries writers’ first scientifically grounded biographies and characteristics of creative work to encyclopaedias. Besides M. Sumtsov wrote and published in encyclopaedias the first scientific biographies of T. Shevchenko, Lessya Ukrayinka, B. Hrinchenko, I. Karpenko-Karyy, M. Kropyvnytskyy, I. Kotlyarevskyy, H. Kvitka-Osnov’yanenko and other Ukrainian authors of the XIXth – the beginning of the XXth centuries. Moreover, he was the first of native scientists to supply encyclopaedic articles about a great number of Slavic folklorists and ethnographers (P. Ivanov, O. Kolberg, Y. Karlovych and others), which in some cases are nearly the only historiographic sources. M. Sumtsov’s ethnographic and folkloristic encyclopaedic articles, which in general quite thoroughly and completely outline the parametres of traditional folk culture, continue to be of great value today. Definitely, Ukrainian science coryphaeus’ encyclopaedic legacy is worth being republished  as a separate collection of works.