Jonas Maironis is considered the poet of the Lithuanian national revival because of his patriotic poetry at the time of the formation of the national consciousness, part of an emotional movement that swept Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century. Maironis does not represent any strictly defined literary trend because such trends did not exist in Lithuanian literature at that time. His aesthetics developed from the romantic, classical atmosphere of the first part of the nineteenth century and were determined by the social conditions of Lithuania toward the end of that century.

Maironis was also a dramatist, and as such he was the first Lithuanian author to attempt to analyze and show as urgent the theme of the downfall of the feudal state of Lithuania and to reflect on the historical destiny of the nation. His historical plays were staged as sentimental patriotic spectacles. In his plays, as...