| Abstract [eng] |
The interwar period (1918–1940) authors regarded creative work as a civic duty; therefore, their literary works addressed issues of culture, language, and society. This Master’s thesis examines The Cultural Identity of the Rural Community in Novella "Šventmarė" (1937) by Sofija Kymantaitė-Čiurlionienė (1886–1958). Novella depicts a rural Samogitian community at the end of the nineteenth century. The study analyses the first edition of the novella. Since "Šventmarė" contains autobiographical motifs from the author’s life, it also reflects her views on society and the cultural development of the community. To provide a multilayered reading of the novella, the thesis applies the theory of New Historicism. This approach makes it possible to relate the literary text to its historical and cultural context, without reducing it to historical factuality. The thesis reveals that culture in a literary text is not merely retold but brough to life. To explain this, the study analyses the expression of social consciousness and the collective unconscious. This analysis shows that S. Kymantaitė-Čiurlionienė portrayed the cultural identity of the late nineteenth-century rural community as contradictory and fragmented, drawing on the dramatic encounter between two periods in history. The study revealed that tradition and memory already come into conflict with the signs of a modernising society. In the novella, the fracture of identity permeates all areas of life: language, religion, tradition, social order, and the understanding of what is perceived as one’s own. Thus, an earlier cultural sensibility declines. Tradition loses its meaning and becomes performative. As it fades, the gap between generations widens. The older members and tradition come to symbolise the past and stagnation, while the younger generation introduces an idealistic promise of the future. Because of the contradictions prevailing within the community, shaped by its changing relationship with culture, people become vulnerable. These aspects point to the complexity of S. Kymantaitė-Čiurlionienė’s understanding of cultural identity, which is especially ambiguous because of the human factor of the characters. |
