| Abstract [eng] |
This master’s thesis analyzes two most important poetry festivals in Lithuania – “Poetry Spring” (PS) and “Druskininkai Poetic Fall” (PDF) – as institutions that create symbolic cultural value. This thesis reviews the history of PS and PDF, the festivals’ main operating strategies, and how these institutions interact with one another. Based on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the literary field, James F. English’s concept of the economy of prestige, and Giséle Sapiro’s analysis of literary festivals as institutions that confer consecration upon authors, the study examines how two major poetry festivals in Lithuania create and distribute symbolic and economic value within the literary field, what the internal hierarchy of this field is, how symbolic value circulates within the field, particularly through literary awards presented during festivals. Also the role of festival-published anthologies is discussed. To investigate these processes more deeply, this master’s thesis conducts a study which involves data collection and information analysis. Data on laureates, sponsors, and the financial value of the awards from 2001 to 2025 is analyzed to examine how the financial value of the awards aligns with the overall festival budget, what are the objectives of the sponsors (state, municipalities, or organizations), and how prestige is used to establish cultural legitimacy. It is revealed that through prestigious PS and PDF prizes, the public funds – economic capital – are “purified” of bureaucracy and politics and become pure literary prestige – symbolic capital. In the field of poetry, that leans more toward the autonomous pole, symbolic capital is still fundamentally more important than economic capital. The administrative structure of the festivals is also examined: who comprises the committees – authorities or bureaucrats, how the ambiguity of reward and honor is managed, and what influence behind-the-scenes processes have on decisions. The study analyzes statistics on the winners of major awards from 2001 to 2025 and discusses in detail one of the main Lithuanian poetry awards – the Jotvingiai Award, presented during the PDF – reviews the award’s regulations, the methods for forming the award committee and the gender distribution among its members. Also the books submitted for evaluation and those that won the awards are compared based on reviews published in the cultural press. The study examines the ways in which festivals act as gatekeepers, i.e., whom they allow into the field of poetry, which authors do they support, and how they provide opportunities, prestige, and access to the greatest symbolic value. This study examines and discusses the significant gender asymmetry among the laureates of major poetry festivals’ awards from 2001 to 2025, and explores why this asymmetry remains particularly pronounced to this day, and why, even following publicly voiced feminist criticism, the change in the gender asymmetry among award winners between 2016 and 2025 has been negligible (from 82% men / 18% women to 75% men / 25% women). The aim is to determine how this imbalance is shaped by the composition of evaluation committees (the role of evaluators), the distribution of symbolic power, and what strategies (public speeches, criticism) are being employed to challenge the established canon. The study also identifies outsiders in the field of poetry who disregard the field’s hierarchy and rules, and who are in turn ignored by the field itself; it examines how being on the margins of the field affects those authors’ careers, visibility, and prestige. |
