Res Humanitariae

The aim of the paper is to reveal how Latvian writers described the Curonian Spit, its inhabitants, nature, and other realities in their non-fiction. To this end, the methodological approach of literary imagology studies is applied. The focus is on the 1930s and the 1960s, when the spit featured most prominently in the works of a wide range of Latvian authors, including both well-known literary classics and less prominent writers. The research demonstrates that in the 1930s, writers focused primarily on New Curonians who spoke a distinct Latvian dialect, and were perceived as a geographically detached and exceptional part of the Latvian nation. Their works reflected a desire to support the preservation of the community’s language and identity. In the 1960s, and somewhat later, non-fiction writers of Soviet Latvia usually gave only marginal attention to New Curonians. They were mostly interested in the uniqueness of the natural environment and the landscape of the spit, which was often poeticised.