| Abstract [eng] |
The City in Contemporary Young Adult Literature: Unė Kaunaitė's "Goodbye, Tomorrow" and Akvilina Cicėnaitė's "The Republic of New York" This master thesis analyzes the image of city in contemporary young adult literature. Only realistic prose was chosen for examination. A prominent role of the city motivated the choice of Unė Kaunaitė’s “Goodbye, Tomorrow” and Akvilina Cicėnaitė’s “The Republic of New York” for this work. It was highlighted that most attention by the Lithuanian young adult literature authors is given to Vilnius and seldom – to Kaunas. The part of this work that presents theoretical approaches discusses the city as a phenomenon and an object of research. It overviews the rise and development of city depictions in literature and includes the most significant insights of urban theorists and literary scholars. Consideration about the usage of terms that describe this subgenre is also presented in this part. The main goal of this work is to analyze the role and expression of the city in chosen literary sources. Memory studies and Mikhail Bakhtin’s chronotope concept were chosen as the methodological approaches for this thesis. Attention is paid to paradigms of space, time and protagonist and the city in the context of historical-cultural memory. The theory behind terms that are used for analysis is also presented in the theoretical part of the thesis. Main tasks of this work are to analyze the chronotopes of both novels, display their significance to protagonists' identity formation, relationships between individuals, generations and the city in respect of historical-cultural memory. Novels are analyzed by addressing developing problems of protagonist identities, city topographies and historical chronotope. Motifs of walking around Vilnius and questions on city’s architectural identity destruction and preservation are distinguished in Kaunaitė’s novel. Interpretation of Cicėnaitė’s adds to this work an important concept of a republic and the influence of autobiographical details on novel’s narrative. This analysis reveals that the city manifests itself as a memory space that links the past and the present and is an inseparable constituent of young adult’s identity. The city (re)creates, forms and establishes young adult’s identity, restricts and also enables its activity. Young adults understand and reflect the city as a part of their identity, as a space, which allows discovering themselves. The young adult and the city are connected by an indivisible relationship, although it presents itself differently: harmoniously in Kaunaitė’s novel and complex in the novel of Cicėnaitė. City imagery is different in the novels, but both of them use city’s panoramic view and have common chronotopes of a dream, journey and (in)dependence. The old town and its architecture and the suburban areas are parts of Vilnius’ identity, but only the historical part is considered the “real” one. The memory of soviet era is an integral part of Vilnius and becomes essential in Cicėnaitė’s novel. Events of January 13th and March 11th are distinguished as fundamental constituents of city’s memory. Overall, it was noticed that the city in Lithuanian young adult literature is depicted also as an idealized, non-deconstructing space. Such space is represented by Vilnius in “Goodbye, Tomorrow” and by New York in “The Republic of New York”. The thesis states that both literary works can be called city novels because of inseparable relationship between the city and protagonists. It can be declared that a new discourse is forming in Lithuanian young adult literature, in which the city has significant role. This is the first study that analyses and emphasizes the phenomenon of the city in the field of Lithuanian young adult literature research and can become the basis for a broader research. The thesis should be of value to literary critics, teachers, librarians, urban anthropologists. |
