This book is dedicated to studying philology at school and is based on the author’s personal pedagogical experience. It comprises observations and reflections on how young students read poetry and prose, concise methodological guidance, accounts of actual lessons and recommendations on how to teach literature to children outside of school curriculum. One section is dedicated to teaching school children to create texts of their own.
The book is primarily intended for teachers of the Russian language and Literature and for students in advanced education programmes, but could also be of interest to the parents of school-age children, as well as to those who are passionate about philology in general.
The book is primarily intended for teachers of the Russian language and Literature and for students in advanced education programmes, but could also be of interest to the parents of school-age children, as well as to those who are passionate about philology in general.
Drawing on the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, as well as its further elaborations in works on populism by Laclau, radical democracy by Mouffe, and social antagonisms by Nico Carpentier, this book analyzes the Ukrainian Euromaidan as a discursive formation that creates social meanings. The results of the discourse analysis presented in the book show how important it is to recognize and problematize the antagonism of progressive social imaginary formulated within the framework of Manichean dualism: “progressive us” vs. “backward them”. The main argument of the book is that by presenting complex social issues as simple dichotomies, the “progressive” discourses of Euromaidan and other social movements in the name of democracy and social justice undermine democracy in its own name by destroying the common symbolic space necessary for communication. To put it in Laclau and Mouffe’s terms, this creates the conditions for “maximum separation”, when two societies appear in place of one, and confrontation between these “societies” becomes fierce, total and indiscriminate. As the Ukrainian crisis demonstrates, such a ferocious discursive confrontation may lead not only to symbolic but also to physical annihilation of each other. The book is addressed to politicians, public figures, political scientists, sociologists as well as for the general audience.
This monograph examines mutual transformations between literature and science in certain texts authored by St. Petersburg Formalists, a literary school that emerged shortly before the Russian Revolution. The author discusses the Formalists' methodological and philosophical origins, the emergence of their collective biography and professional circle of friends, Viktor Shklovsky's literary experiments, and Boris Eichenbaum's intimate prose. The concept of literariness – rather vague and since then abandoned – takes centre stage in the paper as it did in the early work of the Russian Formalists.
