Dwór kowieński w narracji ludowej

Abstract

So far, the image of a mansion in the Kaunas region shown from the point of view of an ordinary inhabitant of the area, for whom it represented superior value as a cultural centre and a symbol of a better life, shaped their personality, and formed their attitude towards the world, has remained undescribed. These ways of perceiving the mansion will be reconstructed with use of a new methodology, so-called oral history, which has already gained numerous supporters both in Poland and in Lithuania, and whose origins can be found in studies by American historians (OH). The observations concerning mansions in Lithuania presented in the article will also be compared with scarce ethno-linguistic studies on the same subject. The starting point for our description are the narratives obtained from people who inhabit Polish villages and towns in the Kaunas region, with use of the autobiographic method of free interview, only partly controlled in order to obtain objective data, arranged in the same dimensions and proportions as they were suggested by the narrators during the interviews.