Lithuanian Literature for Foreigners (online, in Lithuanian and English)

You will learn to:

• Define the characteristics of Lithuanian literary trends.
• Analyze historical circumstances that shaped Lithuanian cultural life in the early, mid, and late 20th century; describe the cultural context of 21st-century Lithuania.
• Describe the development of aesthetic thought; analyze literary works of various styles and genres.
• Analyze Lithuanian poetry and prose, compare Lithuanian writers’ texts with typologically similar texts from other countries; assess Lithuanian literary history in the context of world literature.

Learning topics:

• General characteristics of Lithuanian literature from the press ban period to the beginning of the Soviet era. The importance of folk art in the work of professional artists. Shades of aesthetic thought in early 20th-century Lithuania.
• Key principles of literary ethics and their validity in early 20th-century Lithuanian literature.
• Realism. Lithuanian neo-romanticism and symbolism. Tendencies of Lithuanian avant-garde. Features of modernist and postmodernist texts.
• Overview of cultural life in independent Lithuania.
• Characteristics of Soviet literature and mandatory literary schemes.
• The phenomenon of exile literature.
• Existentialist prose during the stagnation period (texts by B. Radzevičius, R. Granauskas, R. Klimas).
• Lithuanian magical realism (prose by S. T. Kondrotas and J. Skablauskaitė).
• Laconic prose: B. Vilimaitė and R. Lankauskas.
• The phenomenon of intellectual prose: R. Klimas and V. Martinkus.
• Contemporary Lithuanian novel: S. Parulskis, R. Šerelytė, R. Aškinytė, Laura Sintija Černiauskaitė.
• Prose of states of being in the context of 21st-century Lithuanian literature. Genre fusion phenomenon.

Study period:

from September 1 to November 25, II 14.15-16.45 (online)