Colonial Patterns in Latvian Popular Enlightenment Literature

Abstract

The article addresses the question of colonial interpretation of Latvian secular literature of the late 18th and early 19th century. It has been argued recently that because of the colonial language used by contemporaries to describe ethnically determined social relationships between Baltic peasants and the German upper class in the Enlightenment era in the Baltics, it would be possible to expand the understanding of peasant enlightenment by applying to it theoretical approaches of postcolonial studies. Aspects of colonial features in the peasant discourse of the 18th century Baltics are analyzed in the article by paying special attention to their role in creating the secular writing praxis in the Latvian language.