Article
Bolkonskii Won't Die: Fan Fiction Based on Russian Classical Literature
This article is devoted to the phenomenon of fan fiction in its interaction with Russian classical literature. Traditionally, fan fiction is associated with products of mass culture – fantasy novels, TV-series, anime or comic books. The transformation of canonical literary texts by their creative fans is hardly a widespread practice. In Russia and the Russian-speaking world, where “great Russian literature” has sacred status and the classics are obligatory reading at secondary school, fan fiction based on classical texts is an especially exotic and shocking phenomenon. In this work I list the key characteristics of Russian-classics fan fiction, outline fan fiction writers’ most popular Russian classical texts – Eugene Onegin, War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, and Woe from Wit – and describe recurring narratives of fanfics: “crossovers”, “slash” stories, and alternative endings. I also reveal a unique subgenre of fan fiction specific to Russian classical literature, which puts the original work’s author and his characters together into the same literary space. Further, I problematize the reverence given to literary classics in the Russian-speaking world, the secondary school experience, and their influence on the creative processes of fan fiction. From a series of in-depth interviews with fan fiction writers, I identify the emotional modes of “guilt”, “responsibility” and “challenge” that are typical of the Russian-classics fan fiction experience.
The article reconstructs the history of the creation of Russia’s literary canon in the second half of the nineteenth century, and more speci cally – the phenomenon of Russian classic literature as codi ed in the high school curriculum of the time. The fact that teaching Russian literature was not abandoned in schools in the 1870s and that the writings published before about 1842 had acquired the status of “classics” owed to a very speci c political constellation. The author argues that the turn toward classicism in education in the early 1870s by the newly appointed minister of public education, Dmitry Tolstoy, re ected the regime’s determination to embrace and promote Russian nationalism while curtailing its democratic potential. This both opened up an opportunity for Russian literature to be included in the school curriculum and mandated the format of this inclusion as rigid lists of compulsory reading.
The article is devoted to the article "Code Velimir" and the eponymous poem by poet Sergei Biryukov, who claims the artistic heritage of Velimir Khlebnikov as fundamental to he developed the concept of "freestories avant-garde".
The article examines Russian Harry Potter fan fiction as an anthropological source. The analysis focuses on fan fiction as a cultural practice, Russian online communities devoted to the continuation of Harry Potter stories and their common values, reading strategies and practices of writing. Given that Russian Harry Potter fan fiction writers and readers are mostly women, the author pays attention to gender norms as they are represented in fan fiction texts and reading practices. The article explores the central role that individual choice plays in fan fiction axiology, the representations of sex and corresponding problems of the language, the images of family which are produced and discussed in the community and the possibilities that slash as a fictional frame provides for the manifestation of the community’s essential values.
The paper outlines the history of poetic translations of W.H. Auden into Russian, from those included in M. Gutner’s Anthology Of The New English Poetry (1937) to anthology and magazine publications of the 1970s, to two monographic collections of verse printed within a short interval of time at the turn of the 21st (Auden, W.H. Collection of Verse, trans. V. Toporov, 1997; Auden, W.H. Labyrinth, trans. V.P.Shestakov, 2003) and discusses them in the context of the canon. The issue of writing poetic translation into the canon is addressed in both historical and translation study perspectives along the lines introduced by Andre Lefevere in his works Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame (1992) and Translating Literature: Practice and Theory in a Comparative Literature Framework (1992). Historically, the key publications are considered in the international context of both Auden and canon-formation. In this respect the 1930s deserve a special attention as the time of constructing of the canon of modern poetry, i.e. time of anthologies, both internationally (Faber Book of Modern Verse (1936) and Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1892-1935 (1936)) and in the USSR (apart from Gutner’s anthology the paper discusses the approach to forming the canon of the International Literature magazine and their correspondence with Auden concerning translation of his verse in 1938). The popularity of the British-American poet in the late Soviet time and the first post-Soviet decade is also considered against the canon-forming processes in the West and the concept of world literature.
The study, focusing on published and unpublished sources concerning the festivities of 50th anniversary of Ivan Krylov (1838), examines the interference of several problematic fields. The first is the evolution of self-imagining of the literary community in Russia, the institutionalization and professionalization of the Russian literature; the second – the shaping of the Russian jubilee culture set against the background of the culture of mass festivities, ceremonies and practices of commemoration; the third – the struggle of bureaucrats of the highest rank (A. Benkendorf, the chief of the III Department of the Imperial Chancellery, and S. Uvarov, the Minister of Education), as well as groups of the writers, for the priority in inventing the idea of the first literary jubilee.
The article is a critical review of the current condition of canon formation studies in Russia in its connection to Pushkin epoch and ‘golden age’ of Russian Literature. Besides, article reviews Pushkin reading which took place at the University of Tartu
The article is devoted to the problem of communicative features of the constructive structure of the font identity in the city branding sphere. This problem is considered in the framework of the nonlinearity of visual communication based on typology, comparative and structural analysis of the font identity of the world's cities. The article analyzes the brand identity of the city of Murmansk (2015) with the use of qualitative research methods: an expert interview with the designer of Murmansk identity.
This paper explores, mainly from a legal perspective, the extent to which the Russian regulations of traditional TV and online audiovisual media policies have been consistent with the Council of Europe (hereinafter CoE) standards. The study compares between the CoE and Russian approaches to specific aspects of audiovisual regulation including licensing, media ownership, public service media, digitalization, and national production. The paper first studies the CoE perspective through examining its conventional provisions related to audiovisual media, the case law of the European Court of Human Rights as well as the CoE non-binding documents. The paper then considers Russian national legislation governing audiovisual media and the Russian general jurisdiction courts’ practice on broadcast licensing. The paper suggests that the Russian audiovisual regulations are insufficiently compatible with the CoE standards and more in line with the Soviet regulatory traditions.
Systems Thinking in Museums explores systems thinking and the practical implication of it using real-life museum examples to illuminate various entry points and stages of implementation and their challenges and opportunities. Its premise is that museums can be better off when they operate as open, dynamic, and learning systems as a whole as opposed to closed, stagnant, and status quo systems that are compartmentalized and hierarchical. This book also suggests ways to incorporate systems thinking based on reflective questions and steps with hopes to encourage museum professionals to employ systems thinking in their own museum. Few books explore theory in practice in meaningful and applicable ways; this book offers to unravel complex theories as applied in everyday practice through examples from national and international museums.