Baltic Mythological Wights in the Contemporary Lithuanian Fantasy Literature

Although the genre of fantasy or science fiction does not seem to be very popular in Lithuania and is often discarded by the academics, it was noticed that exactly this genre is sold in bigger editions in Lithuania than in other countries. A common stereotype states that science fiction carries the reader to the future, but the so called fantasy invites to look back to the past and those stories often interweave with elements of magic and mythology. Fantasy as a genre of literature receives very little attention both in Lithuania and the rest of the world and probably the most important task of those who write about fantasy seems to be the introduction of the genre itself and to deny the most common stereotypes. Although it is common that fantasy genre contains action in a paralel world, that world is presented like an individual mythological system, which has its own rules that create an illusion that the world presented is real. Quite often an already existing mythological system becomes a foundation for a fantasy novel, with elements of Greek or Scandinavian mythology being particularly popular. In this project, using the comparative method, namely elements of Baltic mythology in contemporary Lithuanian fantasy literature are analysed. It was noticed that most of the authors do not digress too much from the original images in the Baltic mythology, although in some cases some mythological wights adapt characteristics common for characters in foreign fantasy literature, as if it was tried to compensate the „lack of“, e.g. elves or dwarves in our culture