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The Companion to Juri Lotman: A Semiotic Theory of Culture
Compiler: M. Tamm, P. Torop
Editor of translation: M. Tamm, P. Torop
Juri Lotman (1922–1993), the Jewish-Russian-Estonian historian, literary scholar 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 in any language to explore the main facets of Lotman's work and discuss his main ideas in the context of contemporary scholarship.
Boasting an interdisciplinary cast of contributing academics from across mainland Europe, as well as the USA, the UK, Australia, Argentina and Brazil, The Companion to Juri Lotman is the definitive text about Lotman's intellectual legacy. 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 his various scholarly contributions. Saussure, Bakhtin, Language, Memory, Space, Cultural History, New Historicism, Literary Studies and Political Theory are just some of the thinkers, themes and approaches examined in relation to Lotman, while the introduction and thematic Lotman bibliography that frame the main essays provide valuable background knowledge and useful information for further research.
The book foregrounds how Lotman's insights have been especially influential in conceptualizing meaning making practices in culture and society, and how they, in turn, have inspired the work of a diverse group of scholars. The Companion to Juri Lotman shines a light on a hugely significant and all-too often neglected figure in 20th-century intellectual history.
Chapters
Poselyagin N., , in: The Companion to Juri Lotman: A Semiotic Theory of Culture.: L., NY, Dublin: Bloomsbury, 2022. Ch. 16 P. 225–233.
The chapter is devoted to a concept of (visual) image in Juri Lotman's semiotic theory, especially in his works on visuality and cinema studies. ...
Added: February 3, 2022
Zenkin S., , in: The Companion to Juri Lotman: A Semiotic Theory of Culture.: L., NY, Dublin: Bloomsbury, 2022. Ch. 23 P. 311–320.
Essay on Yuri Lotman's relationship with French philosophy and theory of culture of his time. It includes such issues as disciplinary context, semiotics, sign, secondary sign systems, text, semiosphere, inner speech, simulacra, dialectics, typology of cultures, philosophy of history, politics. ...
Added: November 1, 2022
Zenkin S., P.: Classiques Garnier, 2025.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, visual image (painting, sculpture, photography, etc.) can often be a character in literary and film plots, an element of the fictional world. Its narrative forms and functions are explored from a theoretical and comparative perspective. ...
Added: October 13, 2026
ИДВ РАН, 2026.
This paper addresses the issue perceiving the national Vietnamese costume as a tool of cultural representation in the context of official state events held in Vietnam and abroad. The study focuses on specific cases of protocol visits, meetings, forums, and beauty contests, where the ao dai and other types and elements of national clothing are ...
Added: October 12, 2026
Qiang S., Linguistic Research 2025 No. 3 P. 76–85
The determination of new words and meanings is a key issue in lexical history studies. However,
common reliance on identifying “the earliest examples” can be challenged by textual complexity and subjective
disagreements. Focusing on the emergence of the FAST meaning of kuai (快), this study proposes criteria for
identifying new meanings from the perspective of the lexical system. ...
Added: October 12, 2026
Budennaya E., Русская речь 2026 Т. 4 С. 57–78
This study analyzes non-calendar and hypocoristic Christian names
within the Russian white clergy. It identifi es two active periods of name formation using Slavic hypocoristic suffi xes: the 11th — 14th centuries (peaking
in the 12th) and the 16th — 17th centuries.
The fi rst period is tied to the general adoption of Christian names, where
diminutive forms acted ...
Added: October 11, 2026
Budennaya E., Slovĕne 2026 Т. 1 С. 31–67
The article examines Old Russian anthroponyms with the suffix -ec-, originally conveying the meaning ‘less than X’. A diachronic corpus study of
11th–17th-century texts reveals that while this suffix lacked inherent pejorative
connotations in Old Russian sources, contextual (adherent) pejoration is clearly
observable. For pre-15th-century chronicles, two primary usage patterns are
identified—1) characters with explicit negative evaluation, and 2) ...
Added: October 11, 2026
Tulchinskii G. L., Слово.ру: балтийский акцент 2026 Т. 17 № 3 С. 6–25
The intensive transformation of social communication in the digital format is radically changing business activity, forms of employment, management, education, cultural industries, personal life, and the entire lifestyle. This is a large-scale and profound problem of developing an interdisciplinary approach that would solve two tasks: it would provide a common conceptual platform for analysis and, at ...
Added: October 11, 2026
Seleznev M., Луппова А. А., Вестник Свято-Филаретовского института 2026 Т. 18 № 1(57) С. 10–35
The story of the Tower of Babel (Gen 11:1-9) is one of the key episodes in the narratives of the Book of Genesis. In modern scholarship, various—often sharply divergent—datings of this pericope are proposed, as well as different interpretations of its place in the picture of the formation of the biblical text that was put ...
Added: October 9, 2026
Seleznev M., Луппова А. А., Вестник Свято-Филаретовского института 2026 Т. 18 № 2 (58) С. 322–349
Like other narratives in the Book of Genesis, the story of Cain and Abel (Gen 4:1–16) has been studied and commented upon for more than two millennia. However, recent scholarship has introduced significant revisions to traditional interpretations. Over the past five years, several monumental commentaries on Genesis 1–11 have been published, offering new—and sometimes mutually ...
Added: October 9, 2026
Seleznev M., Vestnik Drevnei Istorii 2026 Vol. 3 No. 86 P. 589–592
The article reconstructs the 'biography' of an alleged (in fact, non-existent) fragment of
4QDeutq said to contain a non-Masoretic reading of Deut 32 : 8. It traces how erroneous
references to the fragment emerged during the preliminary publication of the Scrolls in the
1950s, the scholarly attention this fragment received, its eventual disappearance from Qumran
studies after the official ...
Added: October 9, 2026
Ronko R., Тимофеева В. Д., Индоиранские языки 2026 Т. 2 № 2 С. 117–146
The paper is devoted to the variable number marking in Shughni
nouns and reports the results of corpus and experimental studies. In some languages,
including Shughni, the marking of plural nouns is not compulsory. Many
factors such as animacy, referentiality, morphological and semantic properties,
or syntactic position may determine the presence or absence of number marking.
The corpus study investigates ...
Added: October 8, 2026
Ronko R., Zemicheva S., Труды института русского языка им. В.В. Виноградова 2026 Т. 3 № 49 С. 133–149
In the dialects of the Russian-Belarusian borderland, the verb byt’ ‘to be’ in the present tense is represented by a set of short (e, ё) and full forms (ecть, ёсць, etc.). This article investigates the variability of these forms in the dialect corpus of the village of Spiridonova Buda (Zlynkovskij District, Bryansk Region) and in ...
Added: October 8, 2026
Ronko R., RHEMA. РЕМА 2026 № 1 С. 9–20
In the introductory article to the thematic volume devoted to grammatical research on the speech of several villages, the main linguistic-geographical information about the dialect is presented, along with a description of the key methodological principles for working with the material. The dialects under study belong to the group of the Pskov dialects and border ...
Added: October 8, 2026
Rezvykh P. V., Вестник Российского университета дружбы народов. Серия: Философия 2026 Т. 30 № 1 С. 127–143
The issue delivers an analysis of schellingian motives in the later works by A.F. Losev. The author brings information about Losev’s retrospective evaluation of Schelling’s influence on the formation of his own philosophical approach, it’s specific character and it’s grade. The author shows that all the main investigation projects of the later Losev which have ...
Added: October 7, 2026
Pershkina A., Slovĕne 2026 Т. 15 № 1 С. 174–192
The article newly presents archival materials from the Directorate of Imperial Theaters relative to the organization of a crocodile exhibition held in St. Petersburg Passage department store in the autumn of 1864, along with newspaper reports on the event. The close analysis of specific articles demonstrates that this exhibition served as the direct inspiration and ...
Added: October 5, 2026
Поликарпова Д. А., Социологическое обозрение 2026 Т. 25 № 3 С. 432–441
This article is a review of Natalia Samutina's collection of texts «This Music is Too Beautiful: texts on cinema and more» (Moscow: Novoye Literaturnoye Obozrenie, 2025), edited by the author's colleagues, Boris Stepanov and Irina Kaspe. Considering the volume as a «seismograph of time», the author reconstructs the intellectual context of Russian film theory in ...
Added: October 4, 2026
Dezi A., Sesto San Giovanni: Mimesis, 2026.
This book is a metaphysical inquiry into the nature and origin of the manifold. Taking Schelling’s Erlangen lectures of 1820–1821 as its point of departure and hermeneutic horizon, it develops an interpretation of Nomos that transcends its political, juridical, and social determinations. Nomos thereby emerges as the ontological principle of an infinite, variegated multiplicity of ...
Added: October 2, 2026
Файзов Д., М.: Новое литературное обозрение, 2026.
Новая книга Д. Файзова пронизана голосами других поэтов. Речь не о расхожей постмодернистской центонности. Это микроинтертекстуальность на уровне конкретных слов и приемов, коллаж осколков чужих голосов, однако таких осколков, которые сохраняют способность отсылать к целому и к тому же вписаны — вклеены на манер аппликации — в узнаваемую интонацию самого поэта. Данил Файзов—поэт, культуртрегер, редактор. ...
Added: October 2, 2026
Grishina D., Исаева В. М., Journal of Sinographic Philologies and Legacies 2026 Vol. 2 No. 3 P. 47–64
The second half of the nineteenth century became a time of many dramatic events on the Korean peninsula. With opening the country to trade and diplomacy with Westernized (Japan) or Western (USA, France, Great Britain) countries led to a division within Korean society, since the 1880s Chosŏn (Korea) has entered the age of political and ...
Added: October 2, 2026
Маленко Маро Янович, Галактика медиа: журнал медиа исследований 2025 Т. 7 № 2 С. 187–208
The article focuses on "ethnological video games", defined as video games which are developed on the basis of ethnographic and folkloric material. The particular focus is on the kind of ethnological games which contain representation or simulation of shamanistic practices. Among them are "Mooseman" based on Komi-Permyak and Finno-Ugric mythology, "Never Alone" based on Iñupiaq ...
Added: May 4, 2026
Balakina Y. V., Вестник Российского университета дружбы народов. Серия: Литературоведение, журналистика 2026 Т. 31 № 1 С. 163–174
The phenomenon of digital social photography is explored as a product of contemporary social media practices. It analyses the transformation of the role of photography in the digital age, where it functions not merely as a tool for recording reality, but also as an active agent in the process of meaning-making. The study relies on ...
Added: April 3, 2026
Balakina Y. V., Вестник Томского государственного университета 2026 № 524 С. 5–14
The theory of social representations developed by Serge Moscovici underscores the pivotal role played by media communication in shaping collective understandings of objects and processes within social reality. In contemporary society, where nearly every form of communication has become deeply intertwined with media, it follows logically that social representations are not only formed but also ...
Added: March 11, 2026
Zolyan S., Ilyin M., Teslya A. et al., Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences 2025 Vol. 95 No. 1 P. 2–18
The discussion aims to identify the interpretive mechanisms that provide an interface between text and context (between language and the world, language and culture, and language and society). It is a multilevel system of interfaces connected by inversion and recursion relations and operations. We identify this system as a pragmasemantics. It also acts as an ...
Added: February 2, 2026
Aliev R. T., Праксема. Проблемы визуальной семиотики 2026 № 1(47) С. 46–74
This article investigates ideological transformations in Denis Villeneuve's screen adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel Dune. The relevance of the research is determined by the fact that adapting complex literary works for mass cinema inevitably alters their semantic structure, affecting not only plotlines but also the philosophical, political, and cultural dimensions of the original text. The ...
Added: January 19, 2026
Вьюнова В. А., Kozhemyakin E., Знак: проблемное поле медиаобразования 2026 Т. 1 № 59 С. 15–26
This article is devoted to the possibilities of semiotic analysis of the value aspects of advertising creatives. The main emphasis is placed on the study of the potential of the semiotic square of A.J. Greimas as a method of analyzing advertising materials. Despite its powerful analytical potential, this tool is rather poorly used in advertising research, ...
Added: November 20, 2025