Kultūrinių elitų reprezentacija Vilniaus ir Brno spaudoje pirmojoje XIX amžiaus pusėje. Diskursyvios viešosios erdvės konstrukcijos.
| Title in English | The Representation of the Cultural Elites in Vilnius and Brno Press in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century: The Discursive Constructions of the Public Space |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2008 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Viešosios ir privačiosios erdves XVIII amžiaus Lietuvos Didžiojoje Kunigaikštysteje |
| Citation | |
| Field | History |
| Keywords | Elite socialisation, artistic careers, public space |
| Description | The paper analyses the reports on cultural events in the press of the Lithuanian and Moravian capital towns in the first half of the nineteenth century. It attempts to answer the question, how the linguistic representation of the public space reflects the processes of socialization and change of the elites, particularly the changes in the social role of the nobility and in the ways of career-making among artists. Brno and Vilnius in the first decades of the nineteenth century were of similar size, but they had, however, little in common in their social structure as well as in their historical development throughout the nineteenth century. Their common feature is their position of smaller capital towns in the shadow of Vienna and Prague in the first case and of St. Petersburg and Warsaw in the second. Neither of the two towns was big and rich enough to sustain the high culture suitable for a capital. What makes both towns an interesting object for the study of elite socialisation is the ambition to have such a culture. Both towns faced a similar problem: there was an ambition for high culture and the shortage of public ready to enjoy and to pay for it as well as the lack of talented artists, eager to stay in relatively small towns for good. This was the reason, why local nobles and notables developed specific integrative attempts to include the newcomers from non-noble social strata into the “high society” which took care for “high culture”. On the other hand, a relatively empty cultural stage allowed the professional artists to develop specific strategies in order to gain plausible publicity, respectability and last but not least, good references in order to access the lucrative stages of Vienna, Warsaw or St. Petersburg. The local nobles and artists were not original in inventing the new ways of re-establishing or creating the social prestige. This was, however, the higher necessity for the representatives of the upper strata of the society and artistic elites to meet, to cooperate and to be represented together in the reports of the local press, which made the cultural press of those towns to appear as eloquent material for the study of the emergence of the modern elites. The Enlightenment culture developed a new definition of the social role and meaning of the nobility, which accented the mission of spreading ‘good taste’ among wide public and the engagement in collective charitable and patriotic activities. From now on one needed public engagement, publicity and public in order be acknowledged as elite. The local press in the first half of the nineteenth century took up the task to create the stage for the public appearances of the nobles and continued to describe highly cultivated, tasteful, charitable and patriotic qualities of the cultural event as “noble”, even in cases, when the majority of participants were not of noble origin. On the other hand, the linguistic ways of reestablishment of the distinct position of the nobles “on top” of the socially mixed participants were also created. The paper will analyse the geographical and physical elements of the representation of the public space as well as the social characteristics of the actors engaged in public cultural events (the art patrons, the artists, the public), in order to show how the ways of social prestige and career making used to be created on the one hand and how the social hierarchy used to be reaffirmed, on the other. |