After the course the students will be able to:

• To define the features of the main literary trends.
• To analyse particular historical circumstances, which had influence on general cultural situation in Lithuania at the beginning, the middle and the end of the 20th century; to characterise cultural context in Lithuania on the 21st century.
• To characterise the development of aesthetical situation, to analyse literary texts of different genres.
• To analyse the texts of prose and poetry of Lithuanian authors, to compare their creative work with the work of foreign writers, to evaluate Lithuanian literature in the context of world literature.

Topics:

• The general characteristics of Lithuanian literature from the end of the 19th century till the beginning of Soviet era. The influence of folklore on the works of professional art. The nuances of aesthetical thought at the beginning of the 20th century in Lithuania.
• Realism. Lithuanian Neoromanticism and Symbolism. The main tendencies of Lithuanian vanguard literature. The features of modernistic and postmodernistic texts.
• The basic statements of Literary Ethics and their validity at the beginning of the 20th century in Lithuanian literature.
• The review of cultural life in Independent Lithuania.
• The characteristics of Lithuanian literature during Soviet occupation, obligatory literary schemes.
• Lithuanian migrant literature.
• Existential prose during the years of stagnation (B. Radzevičius, R. Granauskas, R. Klimas).
• Magical realism by S. T. Koondrotas and J. Skablauskaitė.
• Laconic prose: B. Vilimaitė and R. Lankauskas.
• The problem of intellectual prose: R. Klimas and V. Martinkus.
• Contemporary Lithuanian novel: S. Parulskis, R. Šerelytė, R. Aškinytė.
• The main tendencies of contemporary Lithuanian literature and the main criteria of evaluation.