Call for papers for issue Nº 23 – Dossier “Lotman Across Frontiers: Dimensions of a Renaissance Thinker”
Beside free-themed papers submitted to the journal, issue Nº 23 of RUS will consider until 15/09/2022 articles, essays and translations into Portuguese on subjects related to Yurii Lotman’s interdisciplinary studies on theoretical architecture. Submissions can cover any of the broad dimensions the life and work of this thinker, whose 100th birthday would fall on 28 February of 2022. His works have been more and more studied in Brazil in the last decade by scholars in a variety of humanistic sciences. But there remains much to discover.
Boris Schnaiderman, who introduced the theory known as the Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School, defined its members, and Lotman in particular, as “renascence thinkers.” This is because of the richness of the school’s production, based on the most diverse traditions of thought. It gave a distinctive character to its works by treating a wide range of themes without reducing them.
Yurii Lotman (1922-1993) was born and was educated in Leningrad, a disciple of Boris Eikhenbaum. In 1950 there was a new intense wave of political repression, the last pogrom of the Stalinist era. Because of this, Lotman was refused entry to doctoral studies. Knowing he was about to be arrested, he left for Tartu, capital of Soviet Estonia, where he began to teach folklore, literary theory, and the history of Russian literature. In 1962, he became acquainted with Toporov, Ivanov, Uspenskii and others. The school of thought flourished in the conditions of liberty of thought of the summer course Tartu University.
Lotman stands out for the breadth of his work, which take the form mainly essays to create an extremely vast kaleidoscope. Among his qualities was the ability to compose very broad texts that would attract interested readers. This inclusive approach was decisive for his literature classes that were transmitted on Estonian and Russian television channels.
After the great interest in the Tartu-Moscou Semiotic School in the 1960’s, still in the structuralist environment – only touched upon by Lotman, who never abandoned his historiographic vision – Lotman was increasingly translated and studied in Europe and America. In Brazil, on the other hand, he has not been sufficiently translated and is read mostly in the Russian original or in the English, Italian and French translations. Nevertheless, there is a wide selection of texts in the trilogy Semiosfera, organized and translated from the Russian almost in toto by the Cuban translator Desidério Navarro and published in Spain by the Universitat de València and Editorial Cátedra.
The dossier “Lotman Across Borders: Shadows of a Renaissance Thinker,” organized by Gutemberg Medeiros, invites articles, essays and translations on such themes as:
a) Studies of theoretical issues elaborated by Lotman
b) The application of concepts in the analysis of objects and fields of his work
c) The reception and interpretation of Lotman's works in Estonia, Russia, and other countries
d) New scientific and methodological approaches in the study of Lotman's work.
e) Translations of texts by or about Lotman, as well as documents concerning his life and work thathave not yet been published in Portuguese.
