Lithuanian prose and decolonization: rediscovery of the bady

Abstract

As Lithuanian academic literary criticism is still largely dominated by methods and analytical strategies shaped during Soviet period, it is important to use other intellectual tools for more adequate literary analysis, especially of those texts that resist the "regime" of conventional critique. It is suggested that postcolonial studies can be used in order to interpret Lithuanian prose texts written during Soviet domination and under the present postcommunist condition. The texts written by Lithuania's leading prose writer of last two decades, Ričardas Gavelis', are analyzed. His early short story "Handless" (1987), is read by the author of the article as one where bodily deformation stands as a metaphor of colonial suffering; the later novel Vilnius Poker (1989), offers its urban spaces as the final decomposition of the body; while in the novel The Quartet of Lost Musings (1997), written after dependence, bodily passion represents power.