Building on the recent work in historical semantics, and in particular on Viktor Zhivov’s contributions to the study of ethical concepts, this article makes a case for rethinking ostensibly conformist works of 18th-century Russian... more
Building on the recent work in historical semantics, and in particular on Viktor Zhivov’s contributions to the study of ethical concepts, this article makes a case for rethinking ostensibly conformist works of 18th-century Russian literature as records of polemical engagement with the realities of autocracy. The article’s focus is on the conceptual poetics of Mikhail Kheraskov’s Rossiad, a republican-spirited poem detailing the moral failures of a bad monarch. The Rossiad is considered in the longue durée of the genre of epic, as well as in the light of its reception in 19th-c. authors, including Alexander Herzen and Ivan Turgenev. Particular attention is accorded to Kheraskov’s innovative uses of allegory: the device of pandemonium of concepts and the climatic imagery of imperial rule. When approached with the toolbox of historical semantics, Kheraskov’s Rossiad emerges as a carefully modulated yet incisive critique of what Zhivov termed Russia’s “state Enlightenment.”
Research Interests:
Among Nina Braginskaya’s many contributions to Classical studies, two have changed the very shape of the field in Russia and internationally: her translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and her publications of Olga Freidenberg’s... more
Among Nina Braginskaya’s many contributions to Classical studies,
two have changed the very shape of the field in Russia and internationally:
her translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and her publications
of Olga Freidenberg’s works. In a spirit of exploration that (it is hoped)
owes something to Nina Vladimirovna’s research, I attempt in what follows
to bring Aristotle’s theory of ēthos into dialogue with Freidenberg’s.
two have changed the very shape of the field in Russia and internationally:
her translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and her publications
of Olga Freidenberg’s works. In a spirit of exploration that (it is hoped)
owes something to Nina Vladimirovna’s research, I attempt in what follows
to bring Aristotle’s theory of ēthos into dialogue with Freidenberg’s.
Research Interests:
“‘Stav na storone ottsa, nash epos ochernil syna’: dve zametki ob istoricheskoi poetike uznavaniia” (“Taking the side of the father, our epic blackened the son”: two notes on the historical poetics of recognition”) In V otvet na luchshie... more
“‘Stav na storone ottsa, nash epos ochernil syna’: dve zametki ob istoricheskoi poetike uznavaniia” (“Taking the side of the father, our epic blackened the son”: two notes on the historical poetics of recognition”) In V otvet na luchshie dary: venok k 63-mu dniu rozhdeniia Aleksandra Evgen’evicha Makhova, edd. O. L. Dovgii, A. L’vova. Tula: Akvarius, 2022, 244-256.
Research Interests:
“Gnyozda klochnei i rokovye retsidivy: k istoricheskoi poetike realisticheskikh siuzhetov” Russkii realism XIX veka: obshchestvo, znanie, povestvovanie [Russian 19th c. realism: society, knowledge, narration], ed. V. Vaisman, A. Vdovin,... more
“Gnyozda klochnei i rokovye retsidivy: k istoricheskoi poetike realisticheskikh siuzhetov” Russkii realism XIX veka: obshchestvo, znanie, povestvovanie [Russian 19th c. realism: society, knowledge, narration], ed. V. Vaisman, A. Vdovin, I. Kliger, K. Ospovat. Moscow: NLO, 2020. P. 522-558.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Semiotics, Russian Literature, Romanticism, Marxism, New Testament, and 22 moreNarrative, Stylistics, Literary Stylistics, Genre Theory, Narrative Theory, Literary History, Pushkin, 19th Century Russian Literature, History of Literary Criticism, Free Indirect Discourse, Aesop, Metapragmatics, History and theory of literary genres, Letter of James, E. R. Curtius, Parables, Life of Aesop, Historical Poetics, Veselovsky, Michael Silverstein, Rhetorical Topoi, and Russian Romanticism
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This essay discusses rhyme and rhythm in syllabo-accentual verse, in which the term ‘rhythm’ refers to stress patterning within the line. Rhyme and rhythm have been investigated in isolation, yet no studies exist that provide a rigorous... more
This essay discusses rhyme and rhythm in syllabo-accentual verse, in which the term ‘rhythm’ refers to stress patterning within the line. Rhyme and rhythm have been investigated in isolation, yet no studies exist that provide a rigorous framework for correlating their effects. The essay shows, based on a thorough statistical analysis of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, that rhythm of individual lines can mimic rhyming structures within the stanza. In addition, we trace the evolution of the Onegin stanza in the Russian literary tradition, uncovering the ways in which covert transformations of poetic form reflect shifts in literary history from late Romanticism to Modernism.
Research Interests:
Building on statistical approaches to poetic meter, this article puts forward a new quantitative method for exploring syllabo-accentual verse that takes into account several formal properties, including rhythm, rhyming, and stanzaic... more
Building on statistical approaches to poetic meter, this article puts forward a new quantitative method for exploring syllabo-accentual verse that takes into account several formal properties, including rhythm, rhyming, and stanzaic architecture. Against the background of a broad typology of European verse, it argues that a basic compensatory mechanism balancing different levels of organization of verse is complicated by the interaction between different national traditions. As a particularly complex case the article investigates the introduction of syllabo-accentual verse in Russia in the 1730s–1740s, which represented an encounter between Polish, German, and French practices of versification. In addition to the general compensatory principle and to local effects of borrowing, the article discusses a previously unexplored kind of formal complexity that evolves with the maturation of a tradition of verse making: certain non-trivial correlations between rhythm and rhyme that have been observed in Pushkin are not found in the work of Lomonosov, a poet who stands at the origin of Russian syllabo-accentual verse. The relevance of the quantitative approach to the larger theoretical claims of Historical Poetics is addressed in the article’s conclusion.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
[Toward a critique of the concept of suggestiveness: observations on Alexander Veselovsky’s “Definition of Poetry”].
Research Interests:
Gazing at the beginnings and the ends: tragedy in the theoretical optics of O.M. Freidenberg The article elaborates some of the key insights drawn from Olga Freidenberg’s analysis of Attic tragedy in Image and Concept, focusing on the... more
Gazing at the beginnings and the ends:
tragedy in the theoretical optics of O.M. Freidenberg
The article elaborates some of the key insights drawn from Olga
Freidenberg’s analysis of Attic tragedy in Image and Concept, focusing
on the implications of her notion of primitive spectatorship for
research into other forms of literature. Freidenberg’s categories are
put into dialogue with those of Walter Benjamin and György Lukács
and, in the concluding section, employed in a contrastive analysis of
Jules Verne’s Vingt mille lieues sous les mers and Valentin Kataev’s Time, Forward!, works that display opposite attitudes to the descriptive (and scopophilic) impulse in European realism.
tragedy in the theoretical optics of O.M. Freidenberg
The article elaborates some of the key insights drawn from Olga
Freidenberg’s analysis of Attic tragedy in Image and Concept, focusing
on the implications of her notion of primitive spectatorship for
research into other forms of literature. Freidenberg’s categories are
put into dialogue with those of Walter Benjamin and György Lukács
and, in the concluding section, employed in a contrastive analysis of
Jules Verne’s Vingt mille lieues sous les mers and Valentin Kataev’s Time, Forward!, works that display opposite attitudes to the descriptive (and scopophilic) impulse in European realism.
Research Interests:
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/7EGBZBGDYFRK5HYWU9WP/full?target=10.1080/00397679.2023.2179807 The iambic trimeter has been studied extensively, but mostly from a descriptive point of view. This article places the discussion of the... more
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/7EGBZBGDYFRK5HYWU9WP/full?target=10.1080/00397679.2023.2179807
The iambic trimeter has been studied extensively, but mostly from a descriptive point of view. This article places the discussion of the tragic trimeter in relation to the functionalist tradition of the study of rhythm and syntax in verse. It presents new data on the interdependence of rhythm and word boundary placement in the tragic trimeter (based on the work of Attic tragic playwrights and the Byzantine Christus Patiens), focusing on the remarkable stability of word placement patterns and the salience of the underlying binary structure of the iambic rhythm toward the end of the line. In this light, the restrictions on word boundaries in the last metron, most importantly Porson’s bridge, are argued to have a rhythmical explanation. Furthermore, based on a juxtaposition of a number of prosodic criteria, including the repertories of word shapes (rhythmic words) in various genres and authors, the study argues that the tragic iambic trimeter represents a distinctive prosodic milieu, different from both prose (and, very likely, spoken speech) and melic poetry.
The iambic trimeter has been studied extensively, but mostly from a descriptive point of view. This article places the discussion of the tragic trimeter in relation to the functionalist tradition of the study of rhythm and syntax in verse. It presents new data on the interdependence of rhythm and word boundary placement in the tragic trimeter (based on the work of Attic tragic playwrights and the Byzantine Christus Patiens), focusing on the remarkable stability of word placement patterns and the salience of the underlying binary structure of the iambic rhythm toward the end of the line. In this light, the restrictions on word boundaries in the last metron, most importantly Porson’s bridge, are argued to have a rhythmical explanation. Furthermore, based on a juxtaposition of a number of prosodic criteria, including the repertories of word shapes (rhythmic words) in various genres and authors, the study argues that the tragic iambic trimeter represents a distinctive prosodic milieu, different from both prose (and, very likely, spoken speech) and melic poetry.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This article puts forward a novel approach to the history of poetic forms in Archaic Greece. By investigating the evolution of the " diegetic frames " involving the figure of the Muse(s), it seeks to trace mutual influences between... more
This article puts forward a novel approach to the history of poetic forms in Archaic Greece. By investigating the evolution of the " diegetic frames " involving the figure of the Muse(s), it seeks to trace mutual influences between different genres (Homeric epic, catalogue poetry, the Homeric Hymns, early choral lyric) and, in the case of the Iliad and Hesiod's Theogony, to identify distinct strata in the composition of one text. This genealogical analysis of the invocation of the Muses demonstrates that choral lyric had a significant impact on the evolving forms of hexameter poetry.
Research Interests:
The article investigates the uses to which the figures of the Muse(s) are put in the poetics of Pindar and Bacchylides, considered against the background of their earlier employments in elegiac and melic poetry. Based on a thorough... more
The article investigates the uses to which the figures of the Muse(s) are put in the poetics of Pindar and Bacchylides, considered against the background of their earlier employments in elegiac and melic poetry. Based on a thorough examination of the evidence, it argues that the two poets pursue different strategies: whereas Bacchylides develops a poetic mythology of named Muses (particularly, Ourania), Pindar redeploys the single unnamed Muse of the earlier hexameter and choral traditions, envisioning her as the poet’s collaborator. Pindar may thus be seen to originate the notion of the Muse as a deity associated with poetic composition, as contrasted with her mnemonic-epistemic role in hexameter verse.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Pindaric odes written around the time of the French Revolution have a penchant for abstractions. Apostrophized Liberty, Fortune, Virtue, and Joy, which replaced the monarch as the ode’s addressee, attest to the numinous prehistory of... more
Pindaric odes written around the time of the French Revolution have a penchant for abstractions. Apostrophized Liberty, Fortune, Virtue, and Joy, which replaced the monarch as the ode’s addressee, attest to the numinous prehistory of distinctively modern concepts that Reinhart Koselleck termed “collective singulars.” In particular, eighteenth-century Pindarics put forward representations of Liberty prevailing over an unenlightened past, which conform to the schema of victorious encounter established in Pindar’s epinician odes. The article dwells closely on two ostensibly pro-revolutionary and highly influential texts in the Pindaric mold, Alexander Radishchev’s Liberty and Friedrich Schiller’s To Joy, which share a concept of freedom that diverges from both the republican and the liberal interpretations.
Research Interests:
ВИВЛIОθИКА: E-Journal of Eighteenth-Century Russian Studies 2 (2014) 24-46.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
“По закону языка нашего": Семантические заимствования как предмет истории понятий
Research Interests:
The article discusses the polysemous Byzantine concept πολιτεία ‘state, citizenship, way of life’, considering it from the viewpoint of the theory of conceptual history. Based on an overview of contemporary scholarship that places the... more
The article discusses the polysemous Byzantine concept πολιτεία ‘state, citizenship, way of life’, considering it
from the viewpoint of the theory of conceptual history. Based on an overview of contemporary scholarship
that places the Byzantine state in relation to the history of society and history of culture, author puts forward
a new approach to the Byzantine conceptual apparatus that combines elements of the traditional history
of concepts and Hans Blumenberg’s metaphorology. In particular, author advances the hypothesis that the
distinctive semiotic regime, in which Byzantine concepts operated, resulted from a reorganization — and
partial reduction — of the system of classical knowledge.
from the viewpoint of the theory of conceptual history. Based on an overview of contemporary scholarship
that places the Byzantine state in relation to the history of society and history of culture, author puts forward
a new approach to the Byzantine conceptual apparatus that combines elements of the traditional history
of concepts and Hans Blumenberg’s metaphorology. In particular, author advances the hypothesis that the
distinctive semiotic regime, in which Byzantine concepts operated, resulted from a reorganization — and
partial reduction — of the system of classical knowledge.
Research Interests:
От долгов христианина к гражданскому долгу (очерк истории концептуальной метафоры) // Очерки исторической семантики русского языка раннего Нового времени (под ред. В. М. Живова). Москва: Языки славянских культур, 2009. 201-70.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
"Зряще мя безгласна..." Заметки о риторике и прагматике древнерусских покаянных стихов
Research Interests:
Поэт Кончеев: опыт текстологии персонажа
Research Interests:
Традиции литературного дилетантизма и эстетическая идеология романа "Дар" // Империя N: Набоков и наследники (под ред. Ю. Левинга и Е. Сошкина). Москва: НЛО, 2006. С. 37-73.
Research Interests:
О двух типах письма в рассказах Л. Добычина // Добычинский сборник V (2007) 1-23.
Research Interests:
Oratio recta как модернистский прием (поэтика повествования Л. Добычина с позиции метапрагматики)
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Translation (into Russian) of Antoine Meillet, “Comment let mots changent de sens” (with Tatiana Nikitina) In: Poniatiia, idei, konstruktsii:
ocherki sravnitel’noi istoricheskoi semantiki, 39-85.
ocherki sravnitel’noi istoricheskoi semantiki, 39-85.
