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Yuri Lotman (1922-1993) was one of the most prominent and influential scholars of the twentieth century working in the Soviet Union. A co-founder of the Tartu-Moscow school of semiotics, he applied his mind to a wide array of disciplines, from aesthetics to literary and cultural history, narrative theory to intellectual history, cinema to mythology. This collection provides a stand-alone primer to his intellectual legacy in both semiotics and cultural history. It includes new translations of some of his major pieces as well as works that have never been published in English. The collection brings Lotman into the orbit of contemporary concerns such as gender, memory, performance, world literature, and urban life. It is aimed at students from various disciplines and is augmented by an introduction and notes that elucidate the relevant contexts.
In this introduction to the semiotic theory of one of the most innovative theorists of the twentieth century, the Russian literary scholar and semiotician Yuri Lotman, offers a new look at Lotman's profound legacy by conceptualizing his ideas in modern context and presenting them as a useful tool of cultural analysis.
One of the most widely read and translated theorists of the former Soviet Union, Yurii Lotman was a daring and imaginative thinker. A cofounder of the Tartu-Moscow school of semiotics, he analyzed a broad range of cultural phenomena, from the opposition between Russia and the West to the symbolic construction of space, from cinema to card playing, from the impact of theater on painting to the impact of landscape design on poetry. His insights have been particularly important in conceptualizing the creation of meaning and understanding the function of art and literature in society, and they have enriched the work of such diverse figures as Paul Ricoeur, Stephen Greenblatt, Umberto Eco, Wolfga...
Yuri Lotman (1922-1993) was a prominent Russian intellectual and theorist. This book presents a new reading of his semiotic and philosophical legacy. The authors analyse Lotman's semiotics in a series of temporal contexts, starting with the rigidity of Soviet-era ideologies, through to the post-Soviet de-politicization that - paradoxically enough - ended with the reproduction of Soviet-style hegemonic discourse in the Kremlin and ultimately reignited politically divisive conflicts between Russia and Europe. The book demonstrates how Lotman's ideas cross disciplinary boundaries and their relevance to many European theorists of cultural studies, discourse analysis and political philosophy. Lotman lived and worked in Estonia, which, even under Soviet rule, maintained its own borderland identity located at the intersection of Russian and European cultural flows. The authors argue that in this context Lotman’s theories are particularly revealing in relation to Russian-European interactions and communications, both historically and in a more contemporary sense.
Universe of the Mind A Semiotic Theory of Culture Yuri M. Lotman Introduction by Umberto Eco Translated by Ann Shukman A major book by one of the initiators of cultural studies. "Universe of the Mind is an ambitious, complex, and wide-ranging book that semioticians, textual critics, and those interested in cultural studies will find stimulating and immensely suggestive." --Journal of Communication "Soviet semiotics offers a distinctive, richly productive approach to literary and cultural studies and Universe of the Mind represents a summation of the intellectual career of the man who has done most to guarantee this." --Slavic and East European Journal Universe of the Mind addresses three mai...
One afternoon in December 1992, in Tartu, Estonia, Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman reluctantly sat down to dictate his memoirs to Elena Pogosian, his assistant, over a pot of tea. It was to be the first of twelve dictation sessions during which the initial draft of Non-Memoirs was created. The sessions were spread out over that winter and into the spring of 1993--the last spring of Lotman's life. The result of the process is this book - a book of memories and recollections of a good part of 20th century, divided into seven sections. The five shorter sections concern themselves with a single anecdote or theme (lice on the front, an encounter with a hare, a "totally Bulgakovian" episode, a visit from the KGB, Tartu School politics); the two longer sections provide the narrative backbone of the memoirs, tending to treat the passage of time, rather than a single event (school and frontline life, the end of the war and postwar university life).
This volume brings together a selection of Juri Lotman’s late essays, published between 1979 and 1995. While Lotman is widely read in the fields of semiotics and literary studies, his innovative ideas about history and memory remain relatively unknown. The articles in this volume, most of which are appearing in English for the first time, lay out Lotman’s semiotic model of culture, with its emphasis on mnemonic processes. Lotman’s concept of culture as the non-hereditary memory of a community that is in a continuous process of self-interpretation will be of interest to scholars working in cultural theory, memory studies and the theory of history.
Demonstrates, with copious examples, how culture influences the way that humans experience 'reality'. This work is suitable for students and researchers in semiotics, cultural/literary studies and Russian studies worldwide, as well as anyone with an interest in understanding contemporary intellectual life.
By analyzing the perspectives and values of not just rulers and elites but also workers and peasants, McDaniel shows that throughout the whole modern period there was widespread loyalty to the "Russian idea." In its most basic sense, the Russian idea is the belief that Russia could have forged its own, separate path in the modern world through adherence to shared beliefs, community, and equality. These cultural values, however, mainly reversed the values of Western society rather than having provided a real alternative to them. The effort of dictatorial states, both tsarist and Communist alike, to rely on the Russian idea in their programs of change led almost unavoidably to social breakdown.
Juri Lotman (1922-1993), the Russian-Estonian literary scholar, cultural historian and semiotician, was one of the most original and important cultural theorists of the 20th century, as well as a co-founder of the well-known Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics. This is the first authoritative volume to explore Lotman's work and discuss his main ideas and intellectual legacy in the context of contemporary scholarship. Boasting an interdisciplinary cast of academics from across the globe, the book is structured into three main sections - Context, Concepts and Dialogue - which simultaneously provide ease of navigation and intriguing prisms through which to view Lotman's various scholarly contribut...