Res Humanitariae

tingos žmogus (The Faithful Man of Kretinga), which had come into his possession. The aim of this article, utilising the methodological approaches of comparative analysis and imagology, is to present Jankus’ satire as a creative and ideological response to Kelch’s work, revealing the differences in images of social and ethnic groups constructed by both authors, and highlighting the ideological opposition between two eras, Enlightenment modernisation and Romantic national awakening. The authors’ perspectives reflect a collision between two distinct eras and ideologies: Enlightenment modernisation and Romantic national awakening. Although Kelch criticised in his satire a specific social group, the villagers of Kretinga (in German Deutsch Krötingen, present-day Kretingalė), he intended to address the Lietuvininkai (Prussian-Lithuanian) peasantry as a whole. His objective was the modernisation and moral education of the community. In contrast, Jankus directed the brunt of his satire towards the social group of modern teachers; representing the Romantic national awakening movement, he rejected the criticism of the Lietuvininkai, and focused entirely on the preservation of the ethnic identity and the mother tongue.