| Abstract [eng] |
The object of study of this dissertation is the epistolary discourse of Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas (1869–1933). The aim of the investigation is to define the epistolary discourse as a peculiar textual and communicative phenomenon which was characteristic of the Lithuanian culture at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century and, subsequently, analyse the main features of the epistolary discourse of Vaižgantas. Various theoretical approaches – New Historicism, narratology, genology and sociology of literature – are combined to introduce an ample description of the epistolary discourse and proportionate the metonymous nature of a letter with its inner ambivalences (history vs. narration, documentary vs. literariness, creation vs. testimony). The epistolary medium is flexible to create specific relations that poise between the private and the public; these relations function as a representative metonymy of the literary field and contribute to its partial autonomy. The correspondence with other priests (Aleksandras Dambrauskas-Adomas Jakštas, Antanas Kaupas) institutes the epistolary community where essential cultural attitudes are formulated. In the letters to younger co-workers of the cultural field (Ona Pleirytė-Puidienė, Juozas Kubilius, etc.) Vaižgantas interiorises the role of an intermediary. The epistolary communication with Kazys Puida, Liudas Gira and others represents the area of epistolary criticism. In the cultural communication through letters, the topic of epistolary self-fashioning and a particular mode of authorial self-consciousness of Vaižgantas are always present. Laiškai Klimams approximates to a fictional narrative, where a carnivalesque first person narrator and ironic interpretation of environment emerge. |
