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Adam Mickiewicz (1798 – 1855) was the greatest Polish Romantic poet, and one of the great intellectual and literary figures of the first half of the 19th century in Europe. Through his verses, as well as his efforts as a scholar, lecturer, political activist and literary celebrity, he sought to bridge the gap between the Slavic nations and the culture of Western Europe. This selection of 27 poems focuses on the poems within Mickiewicz’s oeuvre which might be described as metaphysical. These original, ingenious verses explore an astonishing range of religious, mystical, philosophical, and existential themes, inviting the reader to include Mickiewicz among the most eminent figures of early European Romanticism, including Coleridge, Wordsworth and Novalis, as well the American transcendentalists. Mickiewicz’s poetry and thought are the creation of a restlessly inventive mind: his vision was unorthodox, unpredictable and ever-developing. The book presents a bilingual edition (Polish-English) with a scholarly introduction and commentary, presenting Mickiewicz as a writer in the context of his times. The co-editors of the volume are Jerzy Fiećko, one of the eminent experts in the field of Mickiewicz studies, and Mateusz Stróżyński, an internationally recognized scholar of the Platonic tradition and Western mysticism.
This book deals with the tension between a strategy of language maintenance (protecting and reinforcing the language where it is still spoken by community members) and a strategy of language revitalization (opening up access to the language to all interested people and encouraging new domains of its use). The case study presented concerns a grammar school in Upper Lusatia, which hosts the coexistence of a community of Upper Sorbian-speakers and a group of German native speakers who are learning Upper Sorbian at school. The tensions between these two groups studying at the same school are presented in this book against the background of various language strategies, practices and ideologies. The conflict of interests between the “traditional” community which perceives itself as the “guardians” of the minority language and its potential new speakers is played off on different levels by policy-makers and may be read through different levels of language policy and planning.
Yiddish-Slavic Language Contact and Its Linguistic Outcome
Yiddish, the language of Eastern-European Jews, has so far been mostly described as Germanic within the framework of the traditional, divergence-based Language Tree Model. Meanwhile, advances in contact linguistics allow for a new approach, placing the idiom within the mixed language spectrum, with the Slavic component playing a significant role. So far, the Slavic elements were studied as isolated, adstratal borrowings. This book argues that they represent a coherent system within the grammar. This suggests that the Slavic languages had at least as much of a constitutive role in the inception and development of Yiddish as German and Hebrew. The volume is copiously illustrated with examples from the vernacular language.
With a contribution of Anna Pilarski, University of Szczecin.
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This volume explores the influence of the Socratic legacy in the Russian, East European, and Soviet contexts. For writers, philosophers, and artists, Socrates has served as a potent symbol—of the human capacity for philosophical reflection, as well as the tumultuous (and often dangerous) reality in which Russian-speaking and Soviet intellectuals found themselves. The thirteen chapters include surveys of historical periods and movements (the 18th century, Nietzscheanism, and the “Greek Renaissance” of Russian culture), studies of individual writers and philosophers (Skovoroda, Herzen, Dostoevsky, Rozanov, Bely, Narbut, and many others), and investigations of Socratic subtexts (e.g., in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita and Nosov’s Neznaika series for children). The volume concludes with a “Socratic Texts” section of new translations. The plurality of these topics demonstrates the continued relevance of the Socratic myth not only for Russian-speaking culture, but for the world.
Dolgan is a severely endangered Turkic language spoken in the extreme north of the Russian Federation which has undergone noticeable substrate influence and thus exhibits grammatical structures differing from other Turkic languages. The grammar at hand is the first fully-fledged grammar of Dolgan in English language: It describes the Dolgan language system from an internal perspective basing on corpus data of natural Dolgan speech. It takes historical, comparative and typological perspectives, if applicable, but refrains from pertaining to a particular linguistic theory. Consequently, both Turcologists and general linguists can make use of it independently from their individual research question.
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The Fine Feats of the Five Cockerels Gang is a Marxist-Surrealist Yugoslav epic poem for children, written by Aleksandar Vučo and accompanied by Dušan Matić’s photocollage illustrations and captions. The poem tracks the adventures of five scrappy, resourceful working-class boys who endeavor to free an equally plucky girl from the evil clutches of a convent school (and its fearsome nuns). While weighing in on various contemporary political issues, the story is unpredictable, action-packed and relayed in richly colloquial language. Matić’s photocollages show “what happened in the meantime” between the “songs” (episodes) of the poem, providing clever twists to the linear plot as well as an illustration of the surrealist concepts of time, space and the transformative capabilities of art.
Russian Literature for Children and Teens, 1991–2017
Growing Out of Communism explores the rise of a new body of literature for children and teens following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent transformation of the publishing industry.
Lanoux, Herold, and Bukhina first consider the Soviet foundations of the new literature, then chart the influx of translated literature into Russia in the 1990s. In tracing the development of new literature that reflects the lived experiences of contemporary children and teens, the book examines changes to literary institutions, dominant genres, and archetypal heroes. Also discussed are the informal networks and online reader responses that reflect the views of child and teen readers.
Chinese immigrants who settle in Russia’s Far East without formal instruction in the Russian language communicate with local Russians using Russian vocabulary. Each immigrant forms their language to communicate with Russians, not with family or other immigrants. The ‘single-generation languages’ that immigrants form are not replications or simplifications of Chinese or Russian. Grammatical systems formed by these speakers challenge some fundamental assumptions in early 21st-century linguistic theories. Grammatical systems of single-generation languages provide a unique window into how complex grammatical systems emerge, what are the first formal means of expression, and what are the first meanings expressed in grammatical systems. Given massive migrations in the contemporary world, single-generation languages are common, yet understudied, products of language contact.
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Joe Andrew and Robert Reid assemble thirteen analytical discussions of Tolstoi’s key works, written by leading scholars from around the world. The works studied cover almost the entire length of Tolstoi’s creative career, from some of his earliest stories of the 1850s (The Sevastopol Stories), to those of his last period, including posthumous publications (The Kreutzer Sonata and Father Sergius). Particular attention is paid to his two masterpieces, War and Peace and Anna Karenina. All the studies are based on the most recent developments in cultural theory. The reader of this work will gain new and unique insights into this unparalleled genius of world literature, especially into the methods used to create the works that retain immense importance for us today.

Contributors: Joe Andrew, Eric de Haard, Rose France, Helena Goscilo, Jane Gary Harris, Katalin Kroó, Irina Makoveeva, Deborah Martinsen, Robin Feuer Miller, Robin Milner-Gulland, Audun Mørch, Donna Tussing Orwin, Olga Sobolev, Diane Oenning Thompson