TARAS SHEVCHENKO: FOLKLORIC AND NETLORE VISIONS

Background. A new perspective on the figure of Taras Shevchenko as a close contemporary, rather than just the national leader, emerges in the folklore of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The relevance of Shevchenko's legacy in "network folklore" or "Internetlore" – a recent component of modern folk creativity – serves as a reflection on the socio-political challenges of the time. Methods. Descriptive and semiotic methods were used to analyze the visual and verbal components of memes as a unified text, historical-genetic and comparative-historical methods to identify the interaction between folklore, netlore, and literature, and traditional and innovative aspects of Shevchenkiana in Internetlore; analysis and synthesis for selecting memes. Results. The study identifies the patterns of Taras Shevchenko's image entering contemporary folklore, based on verbal and visual folklore and internetlore texts created from the poetry and persona of the Kobzar. The study also reveals the general mechanisms of literary text transformation in the folk environment. The analysis of netlore Shevchenkiana shows that the activation of folk creativity increases during times of growing socio-political changes in Ukrainian society. The appeal to the writer's creative legacy is becoming more widespread across different age categories. School memes are characteristic of students, and they mainly imitate traditional forms (aphorisms, proverbs, sayings) and modern folklore genres (jokes, political slogans), addressing issues typical for schoolchildren and teenagers. In school memes, the image of Taras Shevchenko is built according to folklore principles. For professional internetlore Shevchenkiana, intended for an adult audience, authentic works (self-portraits, quotes from the author's poems) and remakes are typical, including reinterpretations, stylizations, and fake versions. Conclusions. The analysis of internetlore Shevchenkiana shows that Shevchenko's artistic and literary legacy has become one of the main sources of contemporary folklore innovations. With the emergence of social networks, the image of Taras Shevchenko has entered Internetlore – texts created through the synthesis of various arts (verbal, visual, and performative). The body of internetlore texts about Shevchenko consists of two categories: visual – portrait-based and verbal – poetic. The execution and audience distribution of internetlore texts are based on these categories. Shevchenkiana in internetlore can be classified as either student (amateur, school, philological) or professional (memes created by artists and PR specialists). The main theme in adult-oriented internetlore Shevchenkiana is the Russo-Ukrainian war. Here, the image of Taras Shevchenko is constructed as an epic hero model. Memes portray Shevchenko as a symbol of the nation, a folkloric model of the highest rank.