| Abstract [eng] |
This analysis examines the functions of food descriptions in 20th century Lithuanian literature, with a particular focus on the semantics of cultural memory and nostalgia. The research problem is grounded in the observation that, despite the rapid development of food studies in the humanities over recent decades, Lithuanian literary scholarship still lacks a systematic analysis that would examine food as a mechanism of cultural memory and nostalgia and reflect on representations of different social and ethnic groups. The study aims to address four questions: how food structures the subject’s trajectory in social space; what is the relationship between food signs and power in the analysed texts; under what conditions does cultural memory encoded in food persist or disappear; and what type of nostalgia is expressed through food across different narrative and historical contexts. The analysis draws on semiotic and gastrosemiotic approaches, integrating theories of cultural memory (Maurice Halbwachs, Jan Assmann, Pierre Nora) and concepts of nostalgia (Svetlana Boym, Yuri Lotman). Philippe Lejeune’s autobiographical pact is also employed for the analysis of first-person texts. The corpus is comprised of works by three authors, depicting life in the 20th century Lithuania: Ieva Simonaitytė’s autobiography O buvo taip, Jonas Marcinkevičius’s novel Benjaminas Kordušas, and Birutė Pūkelevičiūtė’s novel Aštuoni lapai. This selection allows for a broad comparative perspective, encompassing the hardships of Lithuania Minor’s Lithuanian community, the decline of nobility, and the experience of exile. The analysis reveals that all four questions are closely interrelated and form a coherent system. The central finding is that food in all three works functions as the primary vehicle for the language of loss rather than a mere symbol or background detail. What distinguishes food from other possible signs of loss is its corporeality – since food requires physical conjunction, its loss becomes not only an intellectual, but also a bodily experience. The trajectory of food’s meaning differs across the three works – in O buvo taip, it accumulates alongside the subject’s coming of age; in Benjaminas Kordušas, it revolves around a lost referent and turns into a simulacrum; in Aštuoni lapai, it is dismantled by the circumstances of war. These trajectories reflect models of integration, stagnation, and erosion, respectively. The study further demonstrates that the type of nostalgia present – reflective, restorative, or suspended – depends not only on the author’s individual choices but also on historical circumstances. Simonaitytė archives from within, while the social framework still exists; Kordušas becomes trapped in restorative nostalgia because his habitus has lost its environment; Pūkelevičiūtė’s nostalgia is suspended, as exile forecloses both restoration and the possibility of full reflection. Finally, all three works confirm that cultural memory requires a social framework, and that a literary text itself can become that framework when all others are destroyed. This analysis contributes to the development of gastrocriticism and gastropoetics in Lithuanian literary studies and may be of interest to researchers in food studies, exile literature, and cultural memory. A possible continuation of this research would be the expansion of the analysis to include additional authors or a cross-cultural comparative perspective. |
