| Abstract [eng] |
The late XIX – early XX century has been noted as the beginning of national literature in the history of Lithuanian literature. It resisted the ban of Lithuanian press assisting in the purification of the Lithuanian language, and in addition collecting a significant cultural heritage. This cultural heritage is especially important for the anthropology and literature. Early Lithuanian literature has been scrutinised by the applied methodology that is still used in Lithuania. In this study the authors are considered as the unique anthropologists and their fictional texts as having the ambition of becoming a thick description. Study objects: the works of K. Donelaitis, M. Valančius, A. Baranauskas, Žemaitė, Lazdynų Pelėda. Study aims: to scrutinise the work of mentioned authors as the result of field work investigation. The objective is to identify the similarities and differences between the anthropologist and a writer, to find manifestations of ethnography in the work of the authors, and to elucidate to what degree can, and already has, the literature become an ethnographical writing which analyses the culture. The specific methods in anthropology have allowed the fictional literature to be considered as the text manifesting ethnography and the authors themselves as anthropologists living in their investigated community. This allows them to familiarise and perceive the culture of the community they describe in more depth than the anthropologist who is from an outside culture. The methods employed in the study allow analysing the fictional literature in a way which unravels the new aspects of it that would be missed if viewed just from the literary theory perspective. Investigation of the authors’ biography and their work uncover their possible identification with anthropologists and, to a limited extent, their possible interactive observation. According to the information collected during the analysis of the fictional texts as a unique result of the anthropological study, it was found that the authors of early Lithuanian literature are able to identify and note specific cultural features of the descriptive community. However, they do not analyse or attempt to understand why things are the way they are. The mentioned authors partially exhibit to be anthropologists and their texts (some more, some less) can be viewed as a result of the interactive observation. |
