O presente trabalho tem por objetivo a análise da evolução da semiótica da cultura na obra de estudioso da cultura e literatura, crítico e filósofo russo Iúri Lótman por meio de traduções e dos comentários concernentes aos seus ensaios, escritos em diferentes épocas e dedicados aos principais conceitos da semiótica da cultura, tais como o fenômeno da cultura e os seus processos dinâmicos, o fenômeno da arte, o problema do texto, a memória cultural e a semiosfera. A obra de Lótman enquanto semioticista é inseparável do contexto histórico dos estudos da literatura, linguística, semiótica, cultura tanto na Rússia, quanto no Ocidente. Entre os seus precursores russos estão os escritores e os filósofos do século XIX e, no século XX, os simbolistas, os futuristas e os formalistas. A essência da semiótica da cultura lotmaniana começou a se formar no âmbito da Escola Semiótica de Tártu- Moscou e com a base na tradição dos estudos linguísticos, já nos trabalhos posteriores ela adquiriu um caráter mais filosófico, ao lidar com a imprevisibilidade dos processos culturais universais. Definimos ainda os pontos de coerência entre as ideias de Lótman e a obra dos estruturalistas e pós-estruturalistas franceses, além de Mikhail Bakhtin e Umberto Eco. / The present work aims at analyzing the development of semiotics of culture in the work of Russian culture and literature scholar, critic and philosopher Yuri Lotman through translation and commentary of his essays, written at different periods and dedicated to the core concepts of semiotics of culture, such as culture phenomenon and its dynamic processes, the phenomenon of art, the problem of the text, the cultural memory and semiosphere. Lotman`s work as a semiotician is inseparable from the historical context of the literature, linguistics, semiotics and culture studies both in Russia and the West. Among his precursors are Russian writers and philosophers of the nineteenth and twentiethcentury, the symbolists, futurists and formalists. The essence of Lotman`s semiotics of culture began to form in the Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School on the basis of language studies tradition, though in later works he developed a more philosophical approach, dealing with the unpredictability of universal cultural processes. Further, we point out the connection between Lotman\'s ideas and work of French structuralists and poststructuralists, Mikhail Bakhtin and Umberto Eco.

This Master’s thesis explores Jewish masculinity and identity within early twentieth-century literature (1903-1925), using texts written by Jewish authors in late imperial Russia and the early Soviet Union. This was a period of change for Russia’s Jewish community, involving increased secularization and reform, massive pogroms such as in Kishinev in 1903, newfound leadership within the 1905 and 1917 Revolutions, and a rise in both Zionist and Revolutionary ideology. Subsequently, Jewish literary masculinity experienced a significant shift in characterization. Historically, a praised Jewish man had been portrayed as gentle, scholarly, and faithful, yet early twentieth century Jewish male literary figures were asked to be physically strong, hypermasculine, and secular. This thesis first uses H.N. Bialik’s “In the City of Slaughter” (1903) and Sholem Aleichem’s “Tevye Goes to Palestine” (1914) to introduce a concept of “Jewish shame,” or a sentiment that historical Jewish masculinity was insufficient for a contemporary Russian world. It then creates two models for these new men to follow. The Assimilatory Jew, seen in Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry cycle (published throughout the 1920s), held that perpetual outsider Jewish men should imitate the behaviour of a secular whole in order to be accepted. The Jewish Superman is depicted in Vladimir Jabotinsky’s “In Memory of Herzl” (1904) and Ilya Selvinsky’s “Bar Kokhba” (1920), and argues that masculine glory is entirely compatible with a proud Jewish identity, without an external standard needed. Judith Butler’s theories on gender performativity are used to analyze these diverse works, published in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian by authors of varying political alignments, to establish commonalities among these literary canons and plot a new spectrum of desired identities for Jewish men. / Graduate / 2020-04-10

1 online resource (181 leaves) / This study relies on ecocriticism as the discipline benefitting the analysis of the imagery of nature in Konstantin Paustovsky’s prose. The objective of this approach is to demonstrate that Paustovsky’s prose goes beyond of what was expected from a Soviet writer by the socialist realist dogma. This thesis attempts to prove that an ecocritical approach validates his prose as being universal in its message and thus relevant to contemporary readers. Scholars of ecocriticism ask the following questions when analysing a nature-orientated prose: what values are expressed in nature-orientated literature, does the portrayal of nature reflects the cultural values of a nation as well as the way in which a person’s interaction with his natural environment enhances or hampers his spiritual development. The timeframe, within which Paustovsky wrote his prose, should be taken into account, because it coincides with the Lenin and Stalin regimes, when any criticism of the government including its nature conservation policies was impossible. The analysis of attitudes of the Russian people towards nature in Paustovksy’prose demonstrates that it evolved from the acceptance of the official stand to the one of criticism. This research resulted in the following conclusions: Firstly Paustovsky’s view with regard to ecological problems and his solutions to these problems are on par with those of modern ecologists. The writer, for example, proposes a holistic way to undertake nature conservation, such as replacing ruined forests by the same type of trees, not interfering in the cycles of nature and stresses the importance of scientific information on how to care of the natural environment. Secondly, it is through his presentation of nature that the author familiarises the reader with the essence of the Russian culture, which is totally intertwined with the manifestations of Russian nature, such as folklore, superstitions, cultural traditions and values attached to certain animals and trees Thirdly, it has been established that the ‘external’ natural landscape of a person namely his environment, undoubtedly influences his ‘internal landscape’, his psyche. This implies that the natural environment of a person will have an influence on his psychological make-up. It is assumed that this study, in particular the use of ecocriticism as a tool to analyse literature where nature plays a role, will shed new light on the role of nature in Russian prose. This is especially the case with regard to the way in which ecological issues such as nature conservation are treated. / Classics and World Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (Russian)

This essay aims to analyze Zachar Prilepin's book “The Platoon. Officers and Militias of Russian Literature” in the context of the book's affiliation to the cultural expressions of the conservative post-post-Soviet historical interpretation. Zachar Prilepin is not only a well-known and well-established modern Russian writer but also a mnemotic actor who actively participates in memory politics and creates a current radical-conservative discourse within this framework. "Platoon" was published in collaboration between the author and the Russian Military History Society. The book, which consists of the biographies of 11 Russian writers, is considered within the framework of this essay as a program script containing a set of various concepts which form the concentrate of the respective worldview. As well as the overall and central warrior-poet concept that is the subject of a comprehensive analysis devoted to the central place in this essay. The "Platoon" is a prime example of an ongoing reformatting of the view on the past that reflects the post-post-Soviet conservative reading of 19th century history. This book postulates that the poet cannot only become a warrior and take part in the wars for the sake of the Fatherland, but also has such an obligation. In this way, art is put in the service of the state - a militaristic empire that art is obliged to praise, just as it must praise death for own sake. The method for this essay is an integrated approach, which was chosen to combine general scientific and special methods. That is methods such as the method of abstraction, the descriptive-functional method and the method of ascension from the abstract to the concrete. The material for this study consists mainly of Zachar Prilepin's book "Platoon" was mainly used. In addition to this, scientific articles and various publications in the mass media were also used. / Denna uppsats analyserar Zachar Prilepins bok ”Plutonen. Den ryska litteraturens officerare och lantvärnsmän” Boken kan ses som ett bidrag hemmahörande inom den post-sovjetiska kontexten av historietolkning. Zachar Prilepin är inte bara en välkänd och väletablerad modern rysk författare, utan även en mnemonisk aktör som aktivt deltar i den ryska minnespolitiken som skapar en aktuell radikal-konservativ diskurs inom dess ramar. ”Plutonen” gavs ut i samarbete mellan författaren och det Ryska Militärhistoriska Sällskapet. Boken, som består av 11 ryska litteratörers biografier, betraktas inom ramen för denna uppsats som en programskrift som innehåller en uppsättning av diverse koncept vilka utgör ett koncentrat av respektive författares världsåskådning och världsuppfattning. Boken innehåller även ett övergripande, och för denna studie centralt, koncept nämligen krigare-poet som är föremål för en omfattande analys och som står i fokus för denna uppsats. ”Plutonen” är ett framträdande exempel på en pågående omformatering av synen på det förflutna som speglar den post-postsovjetiska konservativa läsningen av 1800-talets historia. Denna bok postulerar att poet inte bara kan bli krigare och delta i krigen för Fosterlandets skull utan även har en sådan förpliktelse. På ett sådant sätt sätts konsten i tjänst till staten – ett militaristiskt imperium som konsten måste besjunga, precis som den måste besjunga döden för dess skull Metoden för denna uppsats är ett integrerat tillvägagångssätt som kombinerar allmänna vetenskapliga och speciella metoder såsom abstraktionsmetoden, den beskrivande-funktionella metoden och metoden för uppstigning från det abstrakta till det konkreta. Materialet som används för denna uppsats är huvudsakligen Prilepins bok ”Plutonen”. Utöver detta användes även vetenskapliga artiklar samt diverse publikationer i mass-media.

This dissertation examines Russian fantastical travel narratives from 1784 to 1855, an era of substantial imperial conquest, in which authors of various backgrounds, both Russian and non-Russian, wrestled with questions of cultural identity and the prospects for Russia’s development on the global scale, while in a profound but often contentious relationship with the countries of Western Europe. My chapters cover three different categories of fantastic travel. The first includes journeys to undiscovered space, including Antarctica and the Moon (in works by Shcherbatov, Lyovshin, Kiukhelbeker, and Senkovsky), which largely criticize Russian expansionism. The second is stories of travel to or in the distant future (Vilgelm Kiukhelbeker, Faddei Bulgarin, and Vladimir Odoevsky), which project a more positive view of Russian imperial destiny. The third category is metafictional travel, through maps and the written page (Veltman), which deconstructs the very notion of imperial reality. I argue that writers employed the genre of fantastic travel literature, as well as specific devices such as dreams and frame narratives, to critically interrogate and reshape the imperial and national ideologies of their time. These works anticipate modern science fiction by using a wide range of spatial and temporal settings to create new worlds that highlight the possibilities or faults of their own societies, for satirical or didactic purposes—and as such they benefit from the application of recent theories of science fiction. Given the diverse range of authors and time periods I investigate, my work also has a taxonomic purpose, delineating the thematic evolution of fantastic travel narratives in different categories and paving the way for more targeted analyses of these understudied works.

This dissertation argues that Russia’s confrontation with modernity generated a series of sociocultural paradigm crises that gave rise to a modernist grotesque aesthetic tradition, uniting over forty years of artistic production into a coherent literary movement. While close reading the work of Fyodor Sologub (The Petty Demon [Мелкий бес]), Andrei Bely (Petersburg [Петербург]), Evgenii Zamyatin (At World’s End [На куличках]), and Velimir Khlebnikov (“The Crane” [Журавль]), I argue that prerevolutionary modernist writers utilized grotesque modes of representation to depict a world where the former cornerstones of pre-modern Russian identity are fracturing under the pressures of modernity. In contrast to extant scholarship, I argue the 1917 Revolution is not a fundamental break in Russia’s experience of the crisis of modernity, but an extension, and an exacerbation of it. Though discourses of Russian identity formation will be rapidly recodified around the Soviet project, the same underlying grotesque aesthetic devices used by pre-revolutionary authors are taken up by a new generation of Soviet-era modernists. Mikhail Zoshchenko’s parody in Michel Sinyagin (Мишель Синягин) elicits skepticism about yesterday’s unenlightened masses becoming today’s new Tolstoys. Andrei Platonov’s anomalous depictions of the Russian periphery in his Juvenile Sea (Ювенильное море) are still inhabited by monsters, too far from Soviet nodes of power to be assimilated into the national ideological project. And Konstantin Vaginov (in the novel Goat Song [Козлиная песнь]) and Evgenii Shvarts (in the play The Shadow [Тень]) capture the prevalence of superfluous intellectuals with ruptured psyches, frustrated by their unsuccessful attempts to adapt to the new Soviet reality.

The present work analyses the fiction of the post-Soviet Russian writers, Vladimir Sorokin, Vladimir Tuchkov and Aleksandr Khurgin against the background of the notion of post-Soviet Russian postmodernism. In doing so, it investigates the usefulness and accuracy of this very notion, proposing that of ‘post-Soviet neo-modernism’ instead. Common critical approaches to post-Soviet Russian literature as being postmodern are questioned through an examination of the concept of postmodernism in its interrelated historical, social, and philosophical dimensions, and of its utility and adequacy in the Russian cultural context. In addition, it is proposed that the humorous and grotesque nature of certain post-Soviet works can be viewed as a creatively critical engagement with both the past, i.e. Soviet ideology, and the present, the socially tumultuous post-Soviet years. Russian modernism, while sharing typologically and literary-historically a number of key characteristics with Western modernism, was particularly motivated by a turning to the cultural repository of Russia’s past, and a metaphysical yearning for universal meaning transcending the perceived fragmentation of the tangible modern world. Continuing the older Russian tradition of resisting rationalism, and impressed by the sense of realist aesthetics failing the writer in the task of representing a world that eluded rational comprehension, modernists tended to subordinate artistic concerns to their esoteric convictions. Without appreciation of this spiritual dimension, semantic intention in Russian modernist fiction may escape a reader used to the conventions of realist fiction. It is suggested that contemporary Russian fiction as embodied in certain works by Sorokin, Tuchkov and Khurgin, while stylistically exhibiting a number of features commonly regarded as postmodern, such as parody, pastiche, playfulness, carnivalisation, the grotesque, intertextuality and self-consciousness, seems to resume modernism’s tendency to seek meaning and value for human existence in the transcendent realm, as well as in the cultural, in particular literary, treasures of the past. The closeness of such segments of post-Soviet fiction and modernism in this regard is, it is argued, ultimately contrary to the spirit of postmodernism and its relativistic and particularistic worldview. Hence the suggested conceptualisation of post-Soviet Russian fiction as ‘neo-modernist’.

Because of the recent ban on a Bible translation, in part because of the renderingof God’s name as Jehovah, this thesis analyses what can be learned on the topic of the attitude in Russia towards that name from a historic viewpoint. Early occurrences of the name within the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as examples of prominent authors’ usage of the name in the secular literary sphere, are being discussed. Particular interest is paid to the literature of the 19th century, in an attempt to determine what knowledge the authors had access to, as well as to establish how familiar this rendering of the name was to the society. The analysis continues with literary examples from the 20th century, searching for indications that could reveal the time and possible reason for the altered connotations to the name. My interest is the cultural and historical perspective on the awareness of the name, whether it was a natural part of the cultural and religious heritage or not. And if it was – when and why was the general public deprived of that heritage?I believe that this interdisciplinary approach can provide a valuable picture, impossible to gain if the discussion would have been solely about religiousminorities’ rights.