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Belarusian Literature of the Last Thirty Years From the Perspective of Siarhiej Kavalou’s Book: Сяргей Кавалëў: Беларуская літаратура перыяду трансфармацыі. Абрысы замглëнага краявіду [Siarhiej Kavaloŭ: Belarusian literature of the transformation period: Outlines of a hazy landscape]. Lublin, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej, 2025, 270 p. ISBN: 978-83-227-9916-1
Views:29This text is a review of a book by the renowned scholar of Belarusian literature Siarhiej Kavaloŭ, devoted to the history of Belarusian literature from 1985 to 2020. The author explores the dramatic fate of the literary generation known as the ‘Tutèjšyâ' [Locals], who initiated a process of linguistic and artistic renewal after 1985. He traces the development of the literary scene following independence, highlighting key artistic events, and emerging figures in Belarusian literature. He also presents the political and social circumstances accompanying this process, right up to its stalling following the elections rigged by Lukashenko in 2020. Kavaloŭ writes about Belarusian poetry, prose, and drama. He analyses the work of the most important literary critics and literary historians. The book was published in 2025 at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin in Belarusian.
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Litvins as a Medieval Baltic-Slavic Ethnic Group in Kastuś Tarasaŭ's Novel “The Pursuit of Grunwald”
Views:40Ethnically colored characters based on stereotypical representations of different peoples occupy an important place in the fiction of any nation. At the same time, works of art may depict not only representatives of modern nations, but also those of ethnic groups that have now disappeared, and sometimes even those that never existed at all. A special literary discipline, imagology, is concerned with the study of this issue. In contemporary Belarusian literature, the Litvin ethnotype occupies an important place, as it is a relevant component of certain types of modern Belarusian identity. Its presence is particularly noticeable in works on historical themes. One such text, significant for the national literary tradition, is Kastuś Tarasaŭ's novel The Pursuit of Grunwald (1986), thematically devoted to the Battle of Grunwald in 1410 between the combined forces of Poland and Lithuania and the knights of the Teutonic Order. In this work, the imago of the Litvin occupies a fairly clearly defined position as the self-image, serving to describe his own people and his homeland in the past, in relation to which characters of all other nationalities are positioned as hetero-images. In Kastuś Tarasaŭ's work, Lithuanians are a Slavic-speaking ethnic group of mixed Baltic-Krivich origin, diversified in terms of religion (Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and pagans), whose representatives make up the military and political elite of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The author attributes the following characteristics to them: brave, harsh, cruel, stubborn, persistent, fierce, reckless, short-sighted, and unreasonable. These traits do not fully correlate with the current stereotypical perceptions of modern Belarusians about themselves, which had developed by the end of the 20th century.
