The Companion to Juri Lotman: A Semiotic Theory of Culture

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Juri Lotman (19221993), 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 Lotmans 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 Lotmans 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 Lotmans 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.

Reviews

The cheerful colors of the books cover already say it: Lotman is of and for today. His pioneering semiotics of culture inflected the linguistic bias into a wide array of thinking about culture - not as distinct cultures-in-tension but as the environment that makes life livable. The many chapter titles like Lotman and... are telling: of the width of relevance of his ideas, of their interdisciplinarity, and of the spirit of collaboration. It gives the genre name Companion a new, vital and actual meaning. This book is a great gift to current cultural scholarship. * Mieke Bal, Cultural Theorist and Critic, Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis, Netherlands *
Inexhaustible in his curiosity and creative intelligence, Juri Lotman is one of the great modern thinkers about culture. His generous mind seemed to dart from place to place, casting a brilliant light wherever it turned. At moments of bafflement, I have repeatedly found in him a source at once of clarification and inspiration. This volume stands as powerful testimony to his generative power across a wide range of inquiries. * Stephen Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University, USA *

Author Bio

Marek Tamm is Professor of Cultural History and Head of the Centre of Excellence in Intercultural Studies at Tallinn University, Estonia. He has recently published Rethinking Historical Time: New Approaches to Presentism (ed. with Laurent Olivier, Bloomsbury 2019) and he is also the co-editor of A Cultural History of Memory in the Early Modern Age (ed. with Alessandro Arcangeli, Bloomsbury 2020). Peeter Torop is Professor of Semiotics of Culture at the University of Tartu, Estonia. He is Co-Editor of the Sign Systems Studies journal and the Tartu Semiotics Library.