Ivan the Terrible in Russian Historical Memory since 1991
Ivan the Terrible in Russian Historical Memory since 1991

Author: Charles J. Halperin

Publisher: Academic Studies PRess

Published: 2021-08-31

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 1644695898

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Tsar Ivan the Terrible (Ivan IV, 1533-1584) is one of the most controversial rulers in Russian history, infamous for his cruelty. He was the first Russian ruler to use mass terror as a political instrument, and the only Russian ruler to do so before Stalin. Comparisons of Ivan to Stalin only exacerbated the politicization of his image. Russians have never agreed on his role in Russian history, but his reign is too important to ignore. Since the abolition of censorship in 1991 professional historians and amateurs have grappled with this problem. Some authors have manipulated that image to serve political and cultural agendas. This book explores Russia’s contradictory historical memory of Ivan in scholarly, pedagogical and political publications.

The Nonnarrated
The Nonnarrated

Author: Wolf Schmid

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2023-08-07

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 3111242897

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Telling a story requires selecting and assembling individual elements of the events one wishes to communicate. The "nonnarrated" are the events (or parts of events) that were deliberately left out of the selection, meaning all that was not chosen to be told in the story, or chosen not to be told. Since the realm of the nonnarrated in any given story is infinitely large, studying the nonnarrated requires focusing on that which is not told but nevertheless belongs to a story. This monograph explores the phenomenon of the nonnarrated in narrative short forms from Cechov to Murakami and in novels by Dostoevskij and Robbe-Grillet.

The Development of the Bulgarian Literary Language
The Development of the Bulgarian Literary Language

Author: Ivan N. Petrov

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-03-19

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 1498586082

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Ivan N. Petrov’s The Development of the Bulgarian Literary Language: From Incunabula to First Grammars, Late Fifteenth–Early Seventeenth Century examines the history of the first printed Cyrillic books and their role in the development of the Bulgarian literary language. In the literary culture of the Southern Slavs, especially the Bulgarians, the period that began at the end of the fifteenth century and covered the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is often seen as a foreshadowing of the pre-national era of modern times. In particular, the centuries-old manuscript tradition was gradually replaced by the Cyrillic printed book, which—after the incunabula of Krakow and Montenegro—was published in such centers as Târgoviște, Prague, Venice, Serbian monasteries, Vilnius, Moscow, Zabłudów, Lviv, Ostroh, and many others. Petrov shows how the study of old Slavic prints is closely linked to the processes that determined the emergence of modern literary languages in the Slavia Orthodoxa area, including the influence of the liturgical Church Slavonic language shared by the Orthodox Slavs, which was increasingly standardized and codified at that time. The perspective of a language historian brings new light to the complex and multidimensional issues of this important transitional period of Slavic history and culture.

A Bride for the Tsar
A Bride for the Tsar

Author: Russell E. Martin

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2012-06-15

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 1609090594

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From 1505 to 1689, Russia's tsars chose their wives through an elaborate ritual: the bride-show. The realm's most beautiful young maidens—provided they hailed from the aristocracy—gathered in Moscow, where the tsar's trusted boyars reviewed their medical histories, evaluated their spiritual qualities, noted their physical appearances, and confirmed their virtue. Those who passed muster were presented to the tsar, who inspected the candidates one by one—usually without speaking to any of them—and chose one to be immediately escorted to the Kremlin to prepare for her wedding and new life as the tsar's consort. Alongside accounts of sordid boyar plots against brides, the multiple marriages of Ivan the Terrible, and the fascinating spectacle of the bride-show ritual, A Bride for the Tsar offers an analysis of the show's role in the complex politics of royal marriage in early modern Russia. Russell E. Martin argues that the nature of the rituals surrounding the selection of a bride for the tsar tells us much about the extent of his power, revealing it to be limited and collaborative, not autocratic. Extracting the bride-show from relative obscurity, Martin persuasively establishes it as an essential element of the tsarist political system.

Theme and Space
Theme and Space

Author: A.G.F. van Holk

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-04-12

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 9004657002

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Since the appearance of Lotman's Poetics of the Artistic Text (1970) and Universe of the Mind (1990), and Eco's Introduction to Semiotics (1972), the investigation of the working of signs in language, the arts and the sciences has witnessed an ever-increasing impact on our understanding of human culture. In this book an attempt is made at developing a linguistic model for the semiotics of culture, and to apply this to the analysis of a number of Russian and Polish dramatic texts, mostly from the nineteenth-century. In the first five chapters such well known plays as Ostrovskij's The Thunderstorm, Turgenev's A Month in the Country and Gogol's The Inspector-General are discussed, alternatively with Stowacki's Fantazy and some of Fredro's comedies. Special chapters are devoted to the performance of drama, and to some urgent issues concerning the structure of semiotic space. The last and most lengthy chapter presents an outline of so-called text linguistics, here conceived as a variety of case grammar, duely revised for application to the analysis of drama and its non-verbal context. The book addresses itself to readers familiar with Slavic languages and interested in the relation between language and literary themes, and the place of drama in culture

Encountering Others, Understanding Ourselves in Medieval and Early Modern Thought
Encountering Others, Understanding Ourselves in Medieval and Early Modern Thought

Author: Nicolas Faucher

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2022-12-05

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 3110748800

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Recent research has challenged our view of the Abrahamic religious traditions as unilaterally intolerant and incapable of recognizing otherness in all its diversity and richness; but a diachronic and comparative study of how these traditions deal with otherness is yet to appear. This volume aims to contribute to such a study by presenting different treatments of otherness in medieval and early modern thought. Part I: Altruism deals with attitudes and behaviors that benefit others, regardless of its motives. We deal with the social rights and emotions as well as the moral obligations that the very existence of other human beings, whatever their characteristics, creates for a community. Part II: Religious recognition and toleration considers identity, toleration and mutual recognition created by the existence of religious or ethnic otherness in a given social, religious or political community. Part III: Evil deals with religious otherness that is considered evil and rejected such as heretics and malevolent, demonic entities. The volume will ultimately inform the reader on the nature of religious toleration (including beliefs and doctrines, even emotions) as well as of the self-definition of religious communities when encountering and defining otherness in different ways.