Jaunimo brandos apeigos Lietuvoje XIX a. pabaigoje - XX a. pirmojoje pusėje

LTKnygoje nagrinėjamos XIX a. pabaigos - XX a. I pusės Lietuvos kaimo jaunimo fiziologinės ir socialinės brandos pažymėjimo apeigos. Leidinys parengtas humanitarinių mokslų etnologijos krypties daktaro disertacijos pagrindu. Anksčiau tokia tema nenagrinėta. Tikiuosi, šis darbas bus pirmasis atidesnis žvilgsnis į mūsų senelių jaunystės pasaulį, tačiau dėl menko temos ištirtumo ir šaltinių stokos į baigtinį pretenduoti negali. Būtini platesni jaunimo brandos apeigų, kitų papročių ir gyvensenos būdo tyrinėjimai, senesnių šaltinių paieškos, didesnis ratas tų, kurie domisi šia tema. Minimo laikotarpio jaunimas mažokai domino ir kitų sričių specialistus (ypač sociologus, psichologus), kas apsunkina šio laikotarpio tarpdisciplininius tyrimus. [Iš Pratarmės]Reikšminiai žodžiai: Brandos apeigos; Jaunimas; Papročiai ir buitis.

ENThe present work deals with the problem of age symbolism. In order to grasp activities of a definite social group, we must define its relations with other communities. The chief goal of our investigation is to give an answer to the following question: how do social communities legitimate the passage from childhood to youth, a domain of an autonomous age group? With that end in view, we have set ourselves the following tasks: - to reveal the specific characteristics of youth as a definite age grade; - to display the forms of youth community activities; - to perform the diachronic analysis involving physical and social puberty rites of youth fixed by the author in the course of field work and mentioned in literature and manuscripts; - to classify youth initiation rites according to the social function played by the riles and to the mode of their functioning within a community uniting a definite number of members; - to show the genetic relation among the initiation rites practised in various social communities; - to determine their territorial distribution; - to display ethnic, confessional, social and functional characteristics and the distribution according to gender; - to make structural analysis of ritual process; - to suggest possible explanations of the functional meanings of symbols of rite elements; and - to reveal the social dynamics of rites. In such a way we expect to contribute to the investigation into the rites of human life cycle. The integral method was used to deal with this problem. Rites practised by youth residing in the villages and small towns of Lithuania and the ethnic territories inhabited by Lithuanians in the end of the 19th - first half of the 20th c.c. were investigated. [From the publication]