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Abstracts
AB,
CDEF, GHIJ,
KL, MNO, PQR,
ST, UVWXYZ
Ambrose,
Kathryn
Ambrosiani, Per
Andrew, Joe
Arnold, Richard
Atwal, Maya
Bartlett, Djurdja
Berdichevsky, Alexander
Berg, Andreas
Berkhoff, Karel C.
Bindman, Eleanor
Bjørnflaten, Jan Ivar
Blakesley, Rosalind P.
Bocale, Paola
Bogoslavskaya, Natasha
Bordyuk, Lyudmyla
Briggs, Anthony
Briggs, Jane
Bulatovic, Boris
Burghardt, Anja
Byford, Andy
|
Fitzwilliam
College, Cambridge, UK
27
– 29 March 2010
Abstracts
A-B
Ambrose,
Kathryn
Turgenev and the Woman Question: A Re-vision
This paper will re-consider
Turgenev’s position on the Woman Question by exploring the semiotics of
what I call ‘textual barriers’. These are narrative or textual devices
which can influence the reader’s perception of female characters; in Turgenev’s
case, they include narrative frames, letters and diary extracts, narrative
voice (specifically, his use of first-person male narrators), and finally,
Turgenev’s use of foreign settings, such as Baden-Baden in Dym, Frankfurt
in Veshnie vody, the small town of Z- in Asya and Venice in Nakanune.
The paper will also consider how Lotman’s theory of the ‘extra-text’ can
be applied to a reading of Turgenev and the Woman Question. It is not
just the case that works such as Pervaia liubov’ and Asya are what Freeborn
has described as ‘thinly veiled autobiographies’; it may also be argued
that Turgenev’s relationships with (and experience of) women in many areas
of his life inspired his depiction of many varied types of female characters
in his fiction.
Ambrosiani,
Per
Accentological Characteristics of Early Slavic Participles
and the Development of Modern Slavic Converbs
During the Medieval and Early Modern periods we can observe a dynamic
relationship between, on the one hand, the written varieties of Church
Slavonic (Russian Church Slavonic, Serbian Church Slavonic, (Middle) Bulgarian
Church Slavonic, etc.), and, on the other hand, the coterritorial spoken
local Slavic vernaculars (dialects of Old Rusian, Old Serbian, Middle
Bulgarian, etc.), and the investigation of this relationship is of crucial
importance for the understanding of the subsequent standardization processes
of the modern Slavic languages. Among the verbal categories, the development
of the Slavic participles (including the later split between the indeclinable
converbs and the declinable verbal adjectives) plays a particular role:
when they appear in written texts some of these forms can be assumed to
have a less clearcut relationship to the spoken language forms than, for
example, the finite indicative present tense forms. And as the relationship
between the suprasegmental features of the vernacular Slavic spoken languages
and their representation in writing is even less clearcut, the analysis
of the accentological development of the Slavic participles will have
to be based on data from both accentuated Slavonic manuscripts, descriptions
of spoken dialects, and the modern standard languages. Within this framework,
the present contribution will discuss some methodological considerations
and also present a preliminary analysis of the accentological development
of the Slavic present active participle of the type stoje(i), stoješca(ago),
etc.
Andrew,
Joe
Dostoevsky’s Approach to the ‘Woman Question’ in The Brothers
Karamazov
From his first work, Poor Folk of 1846 to his last, The Brother Karamazov,
completed a few months before his death in 1881, Fiodor Dostoevsky had
been centrally preoccupied with the tragic destiny, as he saw it, of modern
man. In his universe women characters are rarely central, but usually
act as agents of the hero’s fall or redemption. Sonia in Crime and Punishment
of 1866 is the most notable example of this latter role, while there are
numerous examples of fateful women in his fiction. Yet, at the same time,
Dostoevsky in his own life was very sympathetic to the cause of women’s
advancement, and enjoyed very positive relations with campaigners and
writers around the ‘woman question’. The Brothers Karamazov attempted
to give his ‘final word’ on many of the issues which had preoccupied him
before and after his sojourn in Siberia. So too, we see the same paradoxes
at play in his treatment of women within this work. As the title suggests,
men are his primary concern. Quite apart from the four brothers, their
father, and Father Zosima occupy centre stage. At the same time, the novel
throngs with key female characters. The present paper will seek to tackle
this paradox, in an attempt to assess the extent to which Dostoevsky in
this testamental work marginalised women, or whether they are crucial,
not only to the destinies of their menfolk, but to any, systematic interpretation
of the novel. We will therefore study the male-female relationships within
the Karamazov family; Zosima’s dealings with women before and after his
religious life; key characters, such as Liza Khokhlakova, Katerina, and
Grushenka, and their relationships with the men they love, will also be
analysed.
Arnold,
Richard
Native Evil or Foreign Curse? The Origins of Contemporary
Russian Racism
How can one understand the current popularity of racist ideas in Russia?
Do such ideas represent a continuous linear development from Russian history
or are they driven by the infiltration of Western racist groups? How did
an ideology of ethnic hatred emerge from Soviet claims to post-national
class identity? Answers to questions such as these are essential for understanding
the evolution of racist-nationalist attitudes in Russia. Such attitudes
manifest themselves nearly daily in shocking Neo-Nazi and skinhead attacks
on members of ethnic minority groups in Russian cities. This paper represents
the first step toward explaining the origin of such ideas. As such, it
focuses on contemporary Russian racist-nationalist ideologues. Using discourse
analysis, I interrogate four documents influential among Russian racists:
proceedings from the 2006 conference “the future of the White World” (held
in June 2006 in Moscow and attended by American Klan leader David Duke);
Dmitrii Rogozin’s “Vrag Naroda”; Aleksandr Dugin’s “Absolutnaya Rodina”;
and a selection of documents from the website of the racist “Movement
Against Illegal Immigration” (DPNI).
Atwal,
Maya
The Role of Youth in a Dominant Party Regime: The Case of
Molodaia Gvardia Yedinoi Rossii
Taking the development of United Russia’s youth branch, Molodaia Gvardia
(the Young Guard), in 2005 and the party’s introduction of a youth quota
in 2006 as its starting point, this paper investigates what function young
people serve within the increasingly dominant one-party regime in contemporary
Russia. Focusing predominantly on youth representation in legislative
bodies, therefore, the aims of this paper are twofold. Firstly, statistical
data on the age distribution of legislative assemblies is compiled and
analysed in order to determine whether or not young people are better
represented formally under dominant party regimes. Current data on the
age distribution in the fifth convocation of the State Duma of the Russian
Federation is compared with earlier Russian and Soviet parliaments as
well as with federal legislative assemblies in other countries and under
varying regime types. Secondly, the normative implications of greater
youth representation, both in general and under an authoritarian regime,
are considered. Engaging with democratic theory on the subject, this paper
broaches the questions of whether greater youth representation and the
installation of a quota system are desirable or not and what the significance
of encouraging rejuvenation of United Russia’s elite might be in terms
of regime consolidation and democratisation. Ultimately the conclusions
drawn in this paper hope to illuminate what the development of the Young
Guard of United Russia represents.
Bartlett,
Djurdja
From Pretty to Sexy: Socialist and Post-Socialist Femininity
The paper analyses gender representations in Russia and East Europe during
the socialist and post-socialist periods. The early Bolshevik abolition
of sexual difference between genders by political decree informed a puritanical
concept that advocated modesty and unadorned simplicity throughout the
socialist period. Thus, the recognition of the fashionable woman and of
femininity became an irresolvable problem for socialism after Khrushchev
promoted an official re-conceptualization of gender. Connecting the old
puritanical ideas on modesty and simplicity with new categories such as
prettiness and elegance, this concept contributed towards the official
re-introduction of gender difference in its most traditional and fixed
form from the 1960s. However, women living under socialism did not like
the way in which the state controlled their longings for fashionable clothes.
The conventional concept of femininity was never questioned or challenged
by women in the socialist East. They were genuinely unaware of the bourgeois
commercialization of beauty and fashion, and craved the artificiality
of western femininity and dress in place of the ideologically imposed
naturalness. From being a suppressed phenomenon under socialism, femininity
in the post-socialist period went in a completely opposite direction.
In contrast to the previous bureaucratic gaze over fully clothed bodies,
the new iconography allowed for the fetishistic gaze over the naked body.
This paper explores the dramatic changes in the concept of femininity
that took place during these periods.
Berdichevsky,
Alexander
Instant Norm: What Errors You Are Not Allowed to Make in Russian
Iinstant Messaging
I look into the linguistic behaviour of Russian-speaking users of different
instant messengers (IMs), paying special attention to violations of the
norm and reaction to these violations. I analyze the IM-conversation fragments
where the violations of norm trigger meta-linguistic activity (check-back,
indignation, irony, (auto)correction etc.). The popular tendency to disregard
the norm in the IM communication is driven primarily by the desire to
accelerate the communication, the least effort principle (apply less efforts
to speak), and the fashion. The opposite tendency is driven primarily
by the least effort principle again (apply less efforts to understand),
by etiquette considerations, and by care of one’s prestige (literacy still
serves a social marker). Not only these three factors make IM-users sensitive
to certain violations of the standard norm, but they also foster the emergence
of new tacit norms, specific to IM-language. Here are the examples of
norm (both ”standard” and “new IM”) violations which account for most
reactions:
– striking misspellings,
especially if they create ambiguity;
– errors in punctuation which create ambiguity;
– typographic devices which hinder the reading: Latin script instead
of Cyrillic, CAPS, “ZaBoRcHiK”, excessive emoticons etc.
Obviously, different
IM-users have very different command of the norms. However, it seems sharing
the notion of norm does facilitate communication: if two persons engage
in a conversation often, they are likely to have approximately the same
error rate in their messages. Preliminary analysis shows that average
difference between error rates of two permanent interlocutors is about
two times lower than between error rates of two random IM-users.
Berg,
Andreas
Rethinking Orthodoxy: History, Personality and Prophesy in
the Thought of Anton Vladimirovich Kartashev
In this paper, I will explore the concept of church history in the neglected
thought of the last Ober-Procurator of The Holy Synod, Anton Vladimirovich
Kartashev (1875-1960). In 1916, Kartashev closed the meeting of ‘The Petrograd
Religious-Philosophical Society’ with an address on Reform, Reformation
and Fulfilment of the Church wherein he suggested that the only way for
the Russian Orthodox Church to overcome its crisis was to reengage with
its own history as an ontological fact possessing a radically open future.
The Synod officially condemned this position as one too closely aligned
to modernist insensitivity to church dogma evident it its unconventional
understanding of history, personality and prophesy. However, as my paper
will argue, far from embracing modernist attitudes, Kartashev was actually
attempting to unearth principles which he believed have always sustained
the church as a socio-political organisation and as a source of a transcendent
worldview in terms reminiscent of a Russian Idealist approach to spirituality.
I will firstly, discuss Kartashev’s understanding of history as a creative
process capable of giving rise to new spiritual forms; secondly, locate
personality as an agent which realises these new forms through recourse
to socio-political conventions; and thirdly, draw attention to prophesy
as a distinctive kind of hermeneutic fusing the creative and the critical
dimensions pertaining to history and to personality into an eschatological
experience of the divine, through which, religion received its dynamic
character allowing it to overcome its historical parochialism.
Berkhoff,
Karel C.
Early Soviet Reports on Nazi Killings in Kiev
This is the first detailed study of wartime Soviet reporting of Nazi killings
in one specified city—Kiev. Soon after the Nazis murdered the Jews of
Kiev at Babi Yar in September-October 1941, word of it crossed the frontline.
The massacre of the Jews, and the killings of non-Jews that followed,
was mentioned in secret Soviet intelligence reports and in Soviet newspapers
and radio broadcasts. The research will show and attempt to explain the
tendencies in the various, occasionally detailed statements—including
the increasing obfuscation of the Jewishness of Babi Yar’s first victims.
Bindman,
Eleanor
Russia, Chechnya and Strasbourg: Russian Official and Media
Response to the ‘Chechen Cases’ at the European Court of Human Rights
This paper aims to analyse Russian official and press discourse on rulings
made by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) regarding human rights
violations committed by Russian troops in Chechnya during the conflict
and subsequent counter-terrorism operation in the region from 1999 onwards.
By examining official statements and articles from national newspapers
on ECtHR rulings issued between February 2005, when the first judgment
in a Chechen-related case was handed down, and July 2009, this paper aims
to examine how Russian government representatives frame the Court’s work
and the extent to which the press reflect or reject this framing. It also
aims to compare the response to the Court’s work from both officials and
the press with the reaction from both parties to public criticism of Russia’s
human rights violations in Chechnya made by international human rights
NGOs within the same timeframe. The research appears to indicate the importance
of the Court’s work on the Chechen cases to both the Russian authorities
and the press and underlines the tension that currently exists and is
likely to continue in the relationship between the Russian government,
the Court and the Council of Europe. It also indicates that, despite Russia’s
much-criticised record on freedom of the media, some newspapers are prepared
to use the Court’s rulings regarding Chechnya to publicise details of
major human rights abuses in the region and to express implicit or overt
criticism of the authorities for allowing such abuses to occur and failing
to respond to them appropriately.
Bjørnflaten,
Jan Ivar
Grammaticalization, Actualization and Lexical Diffusion in
the Formation of Gerunds in Russian
The formation of gerunds in the Slavic languages is, with the notable
exception of Czech, i.e. spisovná ceština, basically a process
in which the erstwhile predicative participles loose agreement with their
matrix subjects. The loss of agreement implies that the participles lost
morphosyntatic properties and were shifted from a major word class to
an intermediate word class, from nouns to undeclinables as adverbs. In
previous works, attempts have been made to demonstrate that a morphological
change, the replacement of the NomPl morpheme – e with –i created an ambiguity
since one single form could implement Pl as well as FSg agreement, cf.
ona cada imušci vs. oni nekoego zakona ne imušci. This ambiguity in its
turn triggered reanalysis of the MSg form as the single unambiguous Sg
form, cf. (ona) ne ucivsja knigam, no ljublja ctenija.
On the basis of data from Russian 17th century texts, it will be demonstrated
how the loss of agreement unfolded. It will be argued that loss of agreement
has to be understood as actualization of the reanalysis referred to, and
that the way loss of agreement was mapped out through the lexicon, its
lexical extension, had the form of lexical diffision. Various factors
influencing the unfolding of this process will be discussed. Similarity
in form will be pointed out as one among these, i.e. the similarity of
FSg/ Pl vidjašce/vidjašci and imperf. 3rd Sg vidjaše favored the MSg vidja
as a solution to avoid ambiguity.
Blakesley,
Rosalind P.
Learning to Paint in the Provinces
Studies of artistic pedagogy in Imperial Russia continue to focus on educational
institutes based in St Petersburg and Moscow. However, from the 1830s
in particular, there were other important sites of secular artistic training
which query the standard narrative of Russian painting as one centred
on the two major cities. This paper seeks to interrogate the role which
art schools in certain provincial cities in the first half of the nineteenth
century played in the cultural and intellectual life of Imperial Russia,
and the ways in which they shaped or contested a supposedly coherent Russian
school of painting. Like the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in St Petersburg
and the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, the schools
were instrumental in the establishment of professional pride and commercial
acuity among artists, and in the moulding, reflection, and representation
of national identity. However, their location away from the two major
cities engendered an ethos which differed from that at the Academy and
the Moscow School, and added regional dimensions to the national picture
of artistic endeavour. By examining some of their pedagogic idiosyncracies,
this paper explores the extent to which the schools in question nurtured
an artistic and civic character distinct from other cultural centres.
It also considers more widely whether the development of artistic education
in Russia’s provinces throws into question the very possibility of institutionalising
a ‘national’ school of art.
Bocale,
Paola
Polish Cambridge – Ukrainian Rome: Investigating the Effects
of Language Contact Among Slavic Migrants in Europe
This study examines language contact and interference in the languages
used by Polish migrants in Cambridge and Ukrainian migrants in Rome. The
source materials are two bodies of notices posted respectively at the
Polonia Centre in Cambridge and at the Ukrainian market in Rome.
In studies of contact between languages attention has been recently given
to language mixing in some written sources such as personal notices, which
tend to be less subject to the pressures proper to literary norms. In
fact the near absence of the sort of planning typical of speech also characterizes
the language used in our bodies of source material. The migrants’ encounter-clash
with the new linguistic realities produces syntactic or morpho-syntactic
interferences along with the expected presence of borrowings, hybrids
and calques. Although the investigation of the material reveals similar
processes taking place in the two contact situations, some differences,
due to the typological characteristics of the two host countries’ languages,
can be identified. Whereas Italian loans in Ukrainian notices tend to
appear morphologically completely integrated with gender, number and case
markers (reflecting the partially similar morphological complexity of
the two languages), borrowings from English in the Polish ads tend to
be left uninflected and unchanged. Another difference concerns the expression
of overt subject pronouns: probably due to inference from English, Polish
notices show cases of contextually inappropriate overt subject pronouns,
whereas the fact that both Ukrainian and Italian favour null subject pronouns
in similar environments can explain the absence of this phenomenon in
the Ukrainian ads.
Bogoslavskaya,
Natasha
Enhancing Translation and Essay Writing Skills with the Help
of Electronic Resources
When learning a new language we look at the world from another nation’s
perspective and we discover some new culture-specific concepts (e.g. âűňđĺçâčňĺëü)
and some concepts which are not necessarily new or alien, but are language-specific
or so difficult to express in another language that they do not lend themselves
to translation easily (e.g. challenge into Russian). Macaronic sentences
often used by émigrés are a good example. We all know only
too well how frustrating it is to try to translate encourage into Russian
or áűň into English. We also know that there is no one way of doing this
and that we always have to look at the context in order to find something
suitable. Now with the abundance of various electronic dictionaries and
corpora, as never before, we are in a position to have hundreds and even
thousands of examples in context literally at our fingertips. These resources
can help motivate and stimulate students, as well as increase their language
awareness. Moreover, they are a powerful tool which, when used properly,
will provide more efficient ways of learning vocabulary, understanding
syntax and style and can even help students develop translation and essay
writing skills. We propose to look at some ways of using electronic resources
to do just that.
Bordyuk,
Lyudmyla
A Symbolic Interpretation of the Personal Space Concept in
Ukraine: A National Case-study
Some generalization of personal space perception in social and business
settings in Ukraine has been presented as a specific case study. The personal
space concept is given a Ukrainian symbolic interpretation which differs
from that in a western cultural tradition. The perception of space, i.e.
“a hidden dimension” (E.Hall) is molded and patterned by culture. A popular
old Ukrainian folk tale ”The Mitten” in which seven animals are brought
together by the bitterness of a cold winter day, eventually sharing a
lost mitten as their warm home, may serve a vivid example of cultural
perception of space in Ukraine. The animals, one by one, take a refuge
in the mitten until it breaks. “The Mitten” has become one of the symbols
of social standards and life-style patterns in Ukraine as a collectivist,
high-context society. It is a symbol of crowding at home, at work, in
public places, in public transport etc. To a great extent, the perception
of limited space is internalized in Ukrainian people at a subconscious
level. Ukraine has been selected to host the European Football Championship
Euro-2012. To get ready for Euro-2012, Ukraine is to meet European hospitality
and service standards which cover hotels, restaurants, public transport,
stadiums, airports, banks etc. To organize and run everything smoothly,
it is critical to consider cross-cultural aspects of receiving foreign
guests which include respect to personal space.
Briggs,
Anthony
Understanding Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy is famously characterized as being full of contradictions
and paradoxes. His widow said, ‘I lived with Lev Nikolayevich for 48
years, but I never really learned what kind of man he was.’ One of his
finest biographers says, ‘The more evidence we possess about Tolstoy,
the less he makes sense.’ Is there no unifying principle behind this
great man that would enable us to understand him more clearly overall?
Is there anything that he remained true to throughout his life? It may
be worth considering the handful of people who inspired him most profoundly
and lastingly, those for whom his reverence was never retracted. We propose
to examine the impact on him of three mentors, one or all of whom he
idolized from the age of fourteen to the day of his death: Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, Arthur Schopenhauer and Vladimir Chertkov. This leads to some
unhappy conclusions. All three were repulsive men in personality, behaviour
and outlook; they are commonly described as monsters and hypocrites.
They responded to Tolstoy’s deep need to see the worst in life and people,
including himself. Surprisingly, the only unchanging principle behind
Leo Tolstoy was that of misanthropy, pessimism and a hatred of life itself.
This precept can be demonstrated even in the face of some works by Tolstoy
which appear to defy it, notably the optimistic War and Peace. This paper
will summarize Tolstoy’s relationships with these three individuals.
An attempt will be made to show how and why he was attracted to them
beyond all others. In yielding to their negativism he was not succumbing
to an external agency but encountering like-minded thinkers with whom
he recognized an ineradicable affinity. In order to appreciate Tolstoy’s
great genius we must remind ourselves what a nasty man he was in his
personal life, and how poisonous were many of his deepest ideas. None
of this is intended to detract from the universal admiration of Tolstoy’s
achievements as a writer of fiction.
Briggs,
Jane
Literary Marriages: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Turgenev
The centenary of the death of Tolstoy stimulates new interest in his life
and work, and prompts us to consider the significance of his novels for
the present day, as well as his influence on other writers. Both Tolstoy
and Dostoevsky enjoyed long marriages with wives who supported and helped
them, and acted as copyists and editors for their works. What the published
novels owe to the influence of these women may never be known. Turgenev
never married – perhaps his experiences with his mother put him off –
but he loved many women and sustained a ménage a trois with the
singer, Pauline Viardot, for many years. All these writers gave sympathetic
portrayals in their novels of the lives of women both within and without
marriage. One common theme was that of the female suicide, which may have
proceeded from their knowledge of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. They all portray
women who escape from unhappy marriages (or love affairs between single
people) either by the deliberate act of suicide, or by pursuing a self-destructive
course which can only lead to death. The intention in this paper is to
consider examples of the happy marriages, and to contrast them with the
unhappy relationships which result in the death of the woman. Such relationships
inevitably impact upon the children, and consideration will be given to
a theology of childhood, which is proposed by Tolstoy and Turgenev, but
given its most explicit expression by Dostoevsky in Brothers Karamazov.
Bulatovic,
Boris
Russian and Austrian Influence on the Serbian Language Policy
in 18th and 19th Century: Facts and Controversies
After the Great Serb Migration in 1690 to the Southern Hungary (part of
that time Austria), Russian-Slavonic language became the language of Serbian
literacy instead of Serbo-Slavonic (following the arrival of Russian and
Ukrainian teachers to Serbo-Latin schools upon request of the Serbian
Orthodox Church authorities). Austrian state administration tended to
alleviate linguistical links between Austrian Serbs and Russia. Therefore,
Austria and Austrian linguists took the active role in the creation of
Serbian language policy. Thus, literary–political struggle led by Vuk
Karadzic for the introduction of the common people language (lingua vulgaris)
as a literary language was marked not only by the desire for the standardization
of colloquial Serbian language, but also from the ambition of Austrian
royal administration to involve actively in the creation of language policy
of Serbs. The main role had Slovenian linguist Jernej Kopitar, chief censor
for books written in Slavic languages in Vienna, who took a great part
in enabling the support for Vuk Karadzic's struggle for the imposition
of common people language as a standardized literary language. Basic questions
discussed in this paper are twofold. Firstly, to disclose to which amount
the campaign for the adoption of common people language is caused by authentical
desire of Serbian scholars, and by Austrian endeavor to preclude Russian
influence in this field respectively. Secondly, to find out whether the
reform of Serbian literary language is pointed out as a primarily linguistical
or political issue.
Bulatovic,
Boris
Entry of Slovakia into the Euro Area
This paper analyses the process of the euro-adoption in Slovakia and experience
of its central bank which managed to meet all convergence criteria (defined
in the Treaty of Maastricht on the establishment of European Union) during
the reference period and recently adopted euro on 1st January 2009, after
Slovak koruna had been participating in ERM II with effect from 28 November
2005, i.e. for more than two-year reference period from 19 April 2006
to 18 April 2008. After entry into the mechanism, between April and July
2006, Slovak koruna temporarily came under some downward pressure and
traded slightly below the ERM II central rate. As a result, National Bank
of Slovakia (Národná banka Slovenska) intervened in the
foreign exchange market to support the koruna and contain exchange rate
volatility. Moreover, at the request of the Slovak authorities, by mutual
agreement and following a common procedure, the central rate of the Slovak
koruna was revalued by 8.5% against the euro with effect from 19 March
2007. A comprehensive, comparative overview of the conditions of the economic
convergence (price developments, fiscal developments, exchange rate developments,
long-term interest rate developments) of the other new member states of
the Euro-zone and Slovakia is also explored.
Burghardt,
Anja
Telling – About Oneself and One’s Surroundings: the Lyrical
Persona in Pasternak’s Poetry
The aim of my paper is twofold: Firstly, I would like to enquire into
the lyrical persona in Pasternak’s poetry as central part of his poetics.
Secondly, more theoretically, I shall enquire into the notion of the speaker.
Once Pasternak remarked that for him Lermontov is the Russian poet of
the personal (lichnost’), the reason why he dedicated to him the book
of poems Sestra moia – zhizn’, written at the same time as his Temy i
variacii. In my paper I would like to enquire into the way in which Pasternak’s
poems display the speaker. What notion(s) of the personal can be tracked
from these poems? In particular, I shall consider in what way the images,
the prosody and other “formal” aspects of the texts display the speaker’s
attitude towards his or her surroundings, and thus give rise to the impression
of the speaker. As I shall argue, poetry’s immediacy and directness that
is found only rarely in prose to a large extend relies on the twofold
function of the “formal” aspects, including the imagery and prosody, both
of which are particularly elaborated in Pasternak’s Śuvre. The fact that
in poetry the speaking itself is structured, among others by the rhythm
of the verses and the syntax, underlines the impression of immediacy.
To put poetry in such a perspective, allows at the same time for a pointed
investigation of the texts (in the tradition of Russian formalism), and
for an account of the highly personal impression, the “subjectivity” of
poetry.
Byford,
Andy
Russian Diaspora Newspapers in the UK: Some Reflections on Migrant, Community
and National Representations
The paper will examine the way in which UK-published Russian-language
newspapers targeting the Russian-speaking migrant population in Britain
represent this community and what role they play in diasporic self-organisation
and image-construction. The paper is based on an extensive survey of the
UK Russian-language press, collected mostly in the course of 2007-08.
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