Lithuanian children’s anecdotes at the turn of the 20th–21st centuries

The subject of the present analysis is the Lithuanian children’s anecdotes recorded from the 1990s until the beginning of the 21st century from the kids of 6–14 years of age and stored at the Archives of Ethnology and Folklore, Vytautas Magnus University. The article aims at establishing the specifics of the children’s anecdotes and surveying the contemporary repertoire of the Lithuanian children’s anecdotes. In the first chapter of the article, while analyzing the specifics of the children’s anecdotes, the influence of the fairytale type narratives is elucidated, as well as the popularity of the pattern based on questions and answers, the tendency of making fun without reaching the climax, the particularly prominent corporeality of the comics, when anal and sexual images are employed to make fun. In the subsequent chapters, five most popular cycles of the children’s anecdotes are introduced, namely, those about the little Peter, about animals, about various nationalities, about blondes and the anecdotes originating from the movies. According to the author, the contemporary repertoire of the Lithuanian children’s anecdotes is dominated by the texts absorbed from the grown­ ups’ folklore and frequently a little adapted. Texts containing the fairytale type fantastic elements are given preference; besides, kids or characters behaving like kids are likely to be incorporated into the anecdotes. Such anecdotes that allow the performer or the listeners to feel superiority in relation to the anecdotes’ characters are especially favoredKultūrų studijų katedraVytauto Didžiojo universiteta