Colonial Patterns in Latvian Popular Enlightenment Literature

Daija, Pauls

doi:10.12697/il.2014.19.2.9

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…bad landlord vs. noble peasant, which was a typical element of fiction at the end of the 19 th century and represented colonial or post-colonial relations. Blaumanis' story Andriksons also opposes the colonial patterns from the 18 th century enlightenment literature (see Daija 2014). This Blaumanis' story shows national and class oppositions being overcome, and merely presents human nature, both its bad and good sides.…”

Section: The Bible As a Metatextmentioning

confidence: 98%

Modernity, Intertextuality and Decolonization: Some Examples from Estonian and Latvian Literature

Mihkelev

2015

Interlitteraria

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Abstract. Colonization influences the colonized country politically, economically and culturally, and colonial traces persist everywhere in a colonized society, particularly in social manners, behaviour and culture. After a period of colonization, a period of decolonization is needed. According to W. D. Mignolo, decolonization is the long-term processes involving the bureaucratic, cultural, linguistic, and psychological divesting of colonial power. The result of decolonization is a new people and community. The processes involved depend on cultural transfer, cultural relations and modernisation of smaller and peripheral national cultures. All of these processes make it possible for small and peripheral nations to find their own originality within European culture. An "external" or "alien" culture may function as a metatext in an "own" culture and it can describe the "own" culture itself via auto-communication. The literary works of smaller national cultures, such as Estonia and Latvia, represent cultural processes in the process of modernisation and the modernist period in literature at the beginning of the 20 th century and also in the 21 st century. The paper analyses different texts from "alien" cultures (Shakespeare's Hamlet, the Bible etc.) which function as metatexts in "own" culture. Shakespeare's Hamlet as a literary figure has been a very important and influential motif in Estonian literature and culture: Gustav Suits's and Paul-Eerik Rummo's poems used the motif of Hamlet to describe Estonian history and culture. The Bible has influenced Estonian literary culture for a long time. The function of the old biblical myths is to create the eternal, mythical dimension in literary works and create contact with old nations (e.g. Käsu Hans', Juhan Liiv's and Ene Mihkelson's poetry.). Prose writers Rūdolfs Blaumanis' and Eduard Vilde's works represent the Baltic lifestyle, which affected peasants and aristocrats in different ways. Both writers used more of their "own" cultural system and language as metatext to describe the cultural system, rather than using external cultural systems and languages. They transformed realist, romantic and psychological realist styles and languages into internal or "own" cultural systems.

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Section: The Bible As a Metatextmentioning

confidence: 98%

Modernity, Intertextuality and Decolonization: Some Examples from Estonian and Latvian Literature

Mihkelev

2015

Interlitteraria

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“…It is a laborious task, because many documents have either been lost or have not yet been unearthed. The literary historiography of the respective cultures has done a lot (EKA I, 1965: 292-304;Plūdonis 1935;Frīde 1998;Daija 2017), but until recent decades, both early literary cultures had been studied separately, not together. Today they are considered to belong to the same literary field, heavily influenced by German culture, and to be 2 In supplement 2 of her dissertation on musical life in Reval/Tallinn in the 18th century, Heidi Heinmaa provides an overview of advertisements in the advertising journal Revalische Wöchentliche Nachrichten (1772-1852), which document the city's musical life at the time well.…”

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confidence: 99%

Christian Felix Weiße’s Poetry in Latvian and Estonian Literature

Mattheus,

Daija

2023

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The article analyzes the translations of Christian Felix Weiße’s poems in Latvian and Estonian within the context of cultural transfer during the age of Enlightenment. Translations of Weiße’s poems were of great significance because they paved the way for the emergence of secular poetry in both languages. First translations appeared in the 1770s, and others followed in the next decades. While the first Latvian translations were connected to the popular enlightenment efforts of Baltic German pastor Gotthard Friedrich Stender and addressed to the peasant readers, the first Estonian translations were written in the context of experiments with the language and addressed to the Baltic German intellectual elite. First translations that were addressed to Estonian peasants appeared in the early 19th century. The frame of reference of the poems was transformed when they were addressed to peasant reading public: they acquired didactic meaning. At the same time, these translations demonstrated the poetic possibilities of Estonian and Latvian languages. The analysis as a case study reveals the multifaceted influence of German poetry on Estonian and Latvian literary cultures.

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Colonial Patterns in Latvian Popular Enlightenment Literature

Cited by 2 publications

References 8 publications

Modernity, Intertextuality and Decolonization: Some Examples from Estonian and Latvian Literature

Modernity, Intertextuality and Decolonization: Some Examples from Estonian and Latvian Literature

Christian Felix Weiße’s Poetry in Latvian and Estonian Literature

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