Klaipėdos universitetas

The article analyses the plays ‘Children in the Amber Palace’ (1985) and ‘The Comedians’ (1994) by Algirdas Landsbergis (1924–2004), an expatriate Lithuanian playwright, novelist, editor, and literary and theatre critic. The article is based on the idea that the connection with the mother is innate, not acquired, and that is why every person’s subconscious contains a preconceived (archetypal) expectation of the image of the mother. The complicated relationship between a mother and child in the creative process is linked to the transformation and de-archetyping of the image of the mother, i.e. the conscious separation from the inherently archetypal concept of motherhood. Therefore, the article analyses the change in the image of the mother as a result of the failure of the interpersonal relationship with the child. A phenomenological approach and Husserl’s theory of values are used to unpack the emotional states of the characters’ experiences. This perspective is chosen because of the archetypal interconnection between the mother and the perception of identity, considering identity as a sensitive topic in the work of diasporic authors. The analysis reveals that the expression of the relationship with the mother in Landsbergis’ dramaturgy is connected with the depiction of a sense of insecurity, and problems of personal identification, exceptional emotionality and exaggerated apathy in children.

This article analyses how the literary legend “The Queen of the Baltic Sea”, authored by Ludwik Adam Jucevičius, spread in Lithuania and Poland in the 19th and 21st centuries. The literary legend was first published in 1839 in Polish with a Lithuanian text of the sea goddess song. In this article, we focus on the spread of this work in non-academic Polish folklore collections. The research reveals how the text of the legend changed in the collections of legends, tales and fairy tales, how lituanistic details were preserved or lost, and who was referred to as the author of the work. The work shows the significance and problematics of folklore sources and their relationship with children’s literature.

The combination of imagological and semiotic approaches allows us to consider ethnic stereotypes in fiction as elements of national imagomythology. Their totality (and related cultural elements) can be interpreted as a special semiotic system. Like an element of traditional mythology, an ethnic stereotype can take various forms of expression, but what remains unchanged is its place in the general picture of the world, which is transmitted by literary tradition as a set of plots and stories. The totality of such narratives constitutes the national imagomythology – a nation’s description of itself in comparison with other nations. Both mythological images and ethnotypes can be desemanticised, reduced and used in artistic practice as elements of stylisation and imitation. Ethnic stereotypes, as well as elements of traditional mythology, like literary tropes, do not require critical thinking from a rational point of view (they are initially understood as fiction).

Rituals of personal hygiene, beautification and perfume have accompanied people since the beginning of civilisation, but in the 20th century cosmetics began to develop rapidly, products acquired clear functions, and the safety of products was addressed. The object of this study is the 20th-century Lithuanian cosmetics industry and its products. The purpose of the research is to analyse trends and changes in the development of the Lithuanian cosmetics industry, and the variety of manufactured cosmetics, discussing the characteristics of the activities of industrial companies. The article analyses the concepts of the cosmetic product and the concepts of the cosmetic industry. The results of the study revealed that the 20th century can be divided into four different periods in the beauty industry, each of which was characterised by unique trends in the production and use of cosmetics. The beauty industry, which began to grow rapidly between the wars, never stopped: in the 20th century it flourished, influencing not only women but also most spheres of life.

The article describes and analyses the Shrovetide celebrations that took place in the village of Grūšlaukė, in the Kretinga district, during the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st century. The aim of the article is to describe and analyse the Shrovetide celebrations in Grūšlaukė during this period, and to reveal their transformation and the reasons for these changes. The article employs the theoretical approach of interpretive anthropology from Clifford Geertz, a member of the social-interpretive school of anthropology, and is based on the carnival structure model proposed by the British historian Peter Burke.

In this article, I examine the various ways Christmas and New Year greetings were expressed during a time of relatively modest technological diversity. The objective is to explore the array of greetings customs prevalent in interwar Lithuania, focusing on two specific practices: New Year visits, and the exchange of visiting cards. This study sheds a light on the subject by examining visiting cards preserved in archives, publications on etiquette, and interwar Lithuanian periodicals.

The article searches for manifestations of the trickster phenomenon in Lithuanian folklore and folk customs, trying to investigate whether Lithuanian trickster traits are observed in folk culture, and what names they could be given. The search for an image that is well known to cultural researchers in the West in ‘one’s own’ Lithuanian culture opens up opportunities for a broader analysis and understanding of traditional culture. The study reveals a wide variety of destructive, mischievous, joking or even harmful figures in folk tales and stories, calendar feasts and work customs, which do not allow for naming a single one as a trickster, and thus the multifaceted nature of the trickster phenomenon is established. Future research into manifestations of the trickster in our culture could include a deeper reflection on the Lithuanian national identity behind the masks of the dressers, or the text of the folk tale and the story.

In the article, based on ethnographic field research conducted between 1988 and 1996, using the historical comparative method, I aim to compare how the community customs of rural youth in the Klaipėda region differed from those in neighbouring areas of Lithuania, and how they changed when the Klaipėda region was a part of Lithuania from 1923 to 1939. In order to achieve this goal, I set the task of examining the community customs of young people (confirmation and birthdays, name days, parties, beekeeping and bee parties, wedding parties, gegužinė [outdoor parties] and entertainment in the garden, keeping watch over linen at night, and gatherings by the swing). The findings obtained show that during the research period, the community life of the youth of the Klaipėda region intensified, and some customs that existed in the Republic of Lithuania were adopted.