PHILOLOGIST – Journal of Language, Literature, and Cultural Studies

ANTHOLOGIES AND DISCUSSION ON ESSENTIALISM AND ANTI-ESSENTIALISM IN AMERICAN FEMINIST EXPERIMENTAL POETRY

Dubravka Đurić — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this article, which is basically divided into two thematic parts, I deal with American poetry from the perspective of feminist theories. In the first thematic part, I show that around the 60s and 70s of the 20thcentury the work of feminist theoreticians, representatives of the gynocritical pre-poststructuralist method, led to the questioning of andocentric anthologies and the ways of forming male canons based on the exclusion of female poets and other minority groups. It was important for me to point out how feminist critics and poets described the status of the few female poets in the canon and how they began to publish anthologies of women's poetry within mainstream American poetry. Female poets in canonical anthologies and narratives of the history of poetry usually functioned as tokens, exceptions to the rule, which confirmed the belief that female poets could not produce significant, universal poetic value. During the 80s of the 20th century, poststructuralist feminist theories became significant in the interpretation of poetry, and in the field of experimental poetry. This led to experimental female poets starting to publish anthologies of innovative women's poetry during the 90s. These anthologies appear in a period that is called post-feminist, and that term implies the belief that we no longer need feminism because the position of women in society, including the context of production, evaluation and dissemination of poetry, has improved considerably. This thesis was advocated by the critic Jennifer Ashton in her critique of the anthology of experimental women's poetry. Her criticism caused a stormy reaction in the community of experimental women poets, Juliana Spahr, Jennifer Young, Jennifer Scapetone, and Christine Wertheim, among others, who argue that the anthologies are important because they show that feminist experimental poets do exist, contributing to the visibility of their marginalised production. The experimental women poets also point out that women's anthologies are especially necessary at a time when conservative social forces want to abolish women's rights for which they fought in the 20th century.

VLADIMIR NAZOR’S PARTISAN POEMS: A READING FROM THE CAPITALIST PRESENT

Maša Kolanović — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the poetry collection Partisan poems (Pjesme partizanke) by the Croatian poet Vladimir Nazor, written during the People’s Liberation Struggle and published in 1944, and the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology (Boyer and Marinovich, 2011), written in the context of protests related to the last global economic crisis of 2008, also known as the Great Recession. In the comparative reading of these two poetry collections, the analysis is focused on the structural and political relationship between poetry and revolutionary imagery in the context of form, images, and effects. Following recent theoretical research in literature on the topic of poetry, revolution and Partisan art (e.g., Bernes, 2022; Komelj, 2009, Kirn, 2020), the analysis traces specific strategies in the poetic production of political imaginary of a revolutionary quality in the immediate poetic responses to the Second World War and the global economic crisis, with a special emphasis on the formation of the idea of “poetic justice” (Nussbaum, 1997) and the “impossible” (Komelj, 2009) when it comes to imagining the future of overcoming both of the crisis events in which these collections were created.

MARINA TSVETAEVA AS A CULTURAL FIGURE IN THE LITERARY WORKS OF BILJANA JOVANOVIĆ AND IRENA VRKLJAN

Sonja Veselinović — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper presents the early reception of Marina Tsvetaeva's poetry, prose, and essays in Yugoslav, or more specifically, Serbian translated literature, with the intention to examine the influence of the Russian poet as an exemplary cultural figure in the works of Yugoslav women writers. As a cultural icon, Tsvetaeva is present in the literary oeuvre of Serbian writer Biljana Jovanović (1953‒1996), from her second novel, Dogs and Others, to her last play, A Room on the Bosphorus, where she appears as one of the characters. Presenting Tsvetaeva as a countercultural figure, Jovanović builds her authorial authority and integrity based on the example of the Russian author's poetic persona and her autobiographical writing. However, she also establishes a reciprocal relationship, paying homage to this influential poet who, during her lifetime, was deprived of adequate attention from readers and critics. This aspect is also highly relevant in the work Marina, or About Biography by Croatian author Irena Vrkljan (1930‒2021), especially in the frame of the reception of Tsvetaeva's autobiographical works. By juxtaposing details from Tsvetaeva's biography with her own, Vrkljan legitimizes her poetic confrontation with genre, social, and gender conventions. In both writers' works, Tsvetaeva appears as a privileged interlocutor and a desired reader, in contrast to the presumed critical reaction of the literary establishment.

INSULARITY, PLANT AND ANIMAL WORLD IN THE NOVELS OF LORENZA PIERI AND LORA TOMAŠ

Nikica Mihaljević — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Insularity in the novels Isole minori by Lorenza Pieri and Slani mrak by Lora Tomaš is represented as a 'fluid' concept, closely connected with historical, political and social changes. Insularity is also characterised by the ambivalence of its residents: on the one hand, they feel the civil responsibility for peaceful coexistence, on the other, they lack empathy. In this ambivalence, nature plays a decisive role: flora and fauna are foods, but they are also inseparable elements of the island environment, which spur, influence, and determine the actions of the characters. The objective of this paper is to analyse the role of the plant and animal world in the two novels, starting from the specificities of the island environment. By the means of the results of the analysis, it will be demonstrated that the world of plants and animals has the function of establishing and maintaining relationships among characters and between characters and the island environment, reflecting, at the same time, the hierarchical relationships between human beings and flora and fauna. Through the analysis, the results will highlight an anthropocentric vision in these novels, which anticipates a future dystopia. Furthermore, the results of the analysis will highlight the correlation between the world of plants and animals with that of characters, together with the hierarchies present in the contemporary era. The analysis is performed using, as a methodology, the interpretation of the symbols proposed by Mircea Eliade, in such a way as to identify the importance of mutual correspondence between the animal, plant, and character worlds.

LITERARY PERCEPTION OF ONE’S OWN AND THE OTHER IN THE WORKS OF PETAR KOČIĆ

Valentina R. Milekić Kovačić — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Key features of Kočić’s poetics are implied by the specific mentality portrayed by the author and by the manner of its representation, which is primarily reflected in a complex literary perception of one’s own and the Other. The image of the Other in Kočić’s oeuvre represents a literary reality, which, as such, remains insufficiently researched, and through which various poetic aspects of his works can be viewed. For that reason, considerations of the Other are at the core of this paper, within the theoretical-methodological framework ranging from imagology and mentality research. Imagological perspectives offer opportunities for new methodological topicalisation and revalorisations of Kočić’s oeuvre.

CONCEALING AND REVEALING: REPRESSION IN A PALE VIEW OF HILLS AND THE REMAINS OF THE DAY

Blerina Zaimi, Entela Kushta — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

recurring theme in many of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels is that of repression. This article examines A Pale View of Hills (1982) and The Remains of the Day (1989), analysing repression through the lens of psychoanalytic literary theory— particularly Freud’s concept of repression as a defence mechanism—as well as trauma theory and the narratological frameworks of narrative identity. In addition, it draws on sociocultural and gender theory to argue that repression functions not only on an individual level but also as a broader societal and national construct. Through close textual analysis, the article contends that Ishiguro’s characters repress not only emotions but also aspects of their personal and cultural histories in an effort to preserve a fragile sense of dignity and self-coherence.

FUTURIST CONFLUENCES IN ULTRAISM

Alessandro Ghignoli — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Our study focuses on the relationship between the Italian futurist avant-garde and Spanish ultraism. We will see how, above all, the movement founded in 1909 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti will be present in the literary and cultural journey, albeit brief in comparison to the Italian one, of the Iberian avant-garde, which will be able to read the poetic guidelines that refer to a certain anti-passatism and a syntactic rethinking of writing on the one hand, and to certain formulas of public presentations such as the ‘serate’ (evenings), as well as contacts, fundamentally in the futurism-ultraism direction, in the different magazines that sprang up around the avant-garde at the time. The idea of contacts and closer relations, as we will verify, will be present in the readings of the various authors of the two avant-garde movements.

CHARACTERISATION PROCEDURES IN THE NOVEL POSLIJE ZABAVE BY STEVO GRABOVAC

Jelena G. Reljić — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The novel After Party (Poslije zabave) by Stevo Grabovac is very complex in structural and thematic terms. This paper, through a narratological approach to the novel, analyses characterisation procedures. In this respect, the dominant procedure is indirect characterisation through the actions of characters and through their interactions with other characters. The characters are complex and they undergo the process of transformation. Taking into account the issue of classification of characters and the impossibility of placing them within a single general theory, the paper highlights only the most prominent procedures as regards the novel and leaves room for more comprehensive analyses.

VERBAL PERIPHRASES OF COGNITIVE MEANING IN MILKA IVIĆ’S SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES

Jelena T. Ajdžanović — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper deals with the use of verbal periphrases with the meaning of cognitive processes in scientific discourse, more precisely, in the texts by Milka Ivić, collected in Linguistic Experiments 1. The analysis is multi-layered and is carried out on the following levels: The collected combinations of words are examined on the semantic level - their meaning is analysed, whereby, firstly, the opposition objective: subjective perception of reality is taken as relevant, and then, based on the narrower meaning, subgroups are formed. Furthermore, the analysis is carried out on the content-formal level - the semantic content of functional verbs is analysed and described in correlation with the form, but also the meaning, of the nominal member of the analytical construction. Finally, the registered verb periphrases are observed on the level of usage with the aim of determining their discourse potential. In accordance with the set objectives, the conclusions of the conducted analysis were drawn on several levels. The analysis of verb periphrases, considering their meaning, showed that only those combinations of words denoting intellectual processes are registered in the analysed corpus, i.e. those that indicate a conscious reflection on various phenomena, which is expected considering the functional and stylistic affiliation of the examined texts. More narrowly, the recorded verb periphrases are classified into four subgroups that represent the linguistic reflection of research phases – combinations of words with the meaning of (1) perceiving phenomena and thinking about them, (2) forming initial hypotheses, (3) interpreting them and (4) drawing conclusions about their nature and functioning. The results of the content-formal analysis show the following. Firstly, functional verbs, primarily with a full meaning, belong to two meaning classes: verbs of movement and verbs of giving/possession. Secondly, the formal structure of the analyzed analytical constructions is predetermined, primarily, by the valency characteristics of the verb lexeme, but also by the meaning of the noun in the position of the nominal part. Observed from the point of view of the use of verb periphrases, after the conducted research, it is concluded that they have discourse roles of amplifiers, markers of relation to the content and markers of relation to the reader.

KNOWING THE WORLD THROUGH LANGUAGE ‒ PHRASEOLOGISMS IN THE NOVEL ZABLUDA SVETOG SEBASTIJANA BY VLADIMIR TABAŠEVIĆ

Mijana Č. Kuburić Macura, Sandrijela B. Kasagić — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article first outlines the dominant features of the author's narrative manner, i.e. syntactic and lexical features of the novel. In the central part of the paper, an analysis of the unusual use of phraseology is presented, which illustrates the acquisition of the mother tongue in the 1990s war circumstances. Phraseologisms are analysed primarily based on their function in the text, but they are also commented on from the point of view of their dictionary description, formal structure and semantics. Analysing the text revealed several striking strategies that produce a vivid and authentic picture of language development. In the first place, it is a meta-linguistic and meta-contextual separation of the narrator and an observation of the linguistic situation in which the newly adopted phraseological units are perceived and produced; then playing with the inadequate use of phraseology, which indicates insufficient phraseological competence; and understanding and interpreting phraseology in its literal meaning, which is also a characteristic of language acquisition.

THE ORTHOGRAPHIC FEATURES OF THE PROVENANCE NOTES AND BINDING INSCRIPTION OF SILOAN’S FOUR GOSPELS

Vera B. Berak — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper presents the orthographic features of four notes of provenance in Siloan’s Four Gospels (Tetraevangelion) and the inscription embossed on its treasury binding. This Slavonic-Serbian manuscript, dated to the late 14th century, belongs to the Museum of the Old Orthodox Christian Church in Sarajevo. The notes found on the pages of the manuscript and the inscription on the lower cover of the binding originated in different periods (15th, 17th, and 18th centuries) and places, and are associated with different individuals. Research indicates that they were written according to the post-Resava orthographic conventions, while also reflecting certain Raška and Resava orthographic rules. This is best illustrated by how the clusters /ya/ and /ye/ were written, the writing of /ɪyɪ/ and the long i, and the usage of the debelo jer <x> and the tanko jer <q> graphemes. Regarding the writing of debelo jer and tanko jer, which represented a special orthographic phenomenon during the entire Slavonic Serbian period, there is a difference between their execution in the notes and the inscription, with the writers of note 2 and the binding inscription consistently using a single jer grapheme for both, in accordance with the Raška system, and those of notes 1 and 3 following the Resava orthographic rules. The đerv grapheme, which marks the early history of Serbian Cyrillic, was used for the /ʨ/ and /ʥ/ phonemes. However, in the analysed notes and inscription, it does not serve this dual function. The <N> grapheme, used in the pre-reform period, is also present in the most recent, 18th-century provenance mark in Siloan’s Four Gospels.

IN SEARCH OF COMMUNITY: AN ANALYSIS OF EFL TEXTBOOKS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS IN THE REPUBLIC OF SRPSKA

Maja Mandić — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The aim of this article is to examine the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) textbooks used in elementary schools in the Republic of Srpska (RS) based on their representation of community and the development of cooperation and connectedness among students. As a universal teaching material, the textbook is very significant for both students and teachers, and the quality of its content and the values it promotes are extremely important in the learning process. Given that the RS Law on Elementary Education includes provisions referring to the development of social awareness, tolerance, and empathy, the analysis of the main texts is expected to show what themes related to these values are most prominent, who the main participants are and what kind of relationships they develop, as well as what forms of cooperation among students are expected in their school activities. The approach used in the article is content analysis of the texts and the instructions preceding the exercises in the textbooks. The main themes are identified based on how far they extend to strangers and who is included in different communities.The article focuses on tolerance, compassion and empathy as necessary skills to develop for a thriving society and it also examines the language of the task instructions based on whether they promote cooperation among students and what kind of language skills these exercises are meant to develop.

TABOO TALK: LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE AND SHIFTING BOUNDARIES OF SOCIAL DISCOURSE

Jelena V. Šajinović Novaković, Milica R. Mijatović, Milica Đ. Jošić Milinović — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Due to the influence of the mass media and social media which have brought changes in social norms and behaviours people are more than ever free to speak their minds without being censored under the cloak of anonymity, and hidden behind different platforms. This freedom of speech has encouraged them to speak and act the way they would never speak and act otherwise but has it affected the choice of topics they are comfortable to talk about? Are there taboo topics anymore, either cultural or personal? In language, a taboo is associated with things that are not said because of the embarrassment they cause. This paper aims to explore topics young people, college students, from three different societies find embarrassing to talk about with other people and particularly with their parents. They were given a set of questions considered taboo or controversial related to love or sex matters, physical appearance, money, political attitudes, health issues, problems with the law, and similar, and asked to specify who has the right to ask them the given question. They were also asked to tick the topics they find (un)comfortable to talk about in front of their parents, including swearing, and to provide a question they find deeply offensive.

PRECEDENT NAMES IN SERBIAN CULTURE AND THEIR REFLECTIONS ON THE COMMUNICATIVE FUNCTION OF LANGUAGE

Đina M. Vesić, Ana M. Krstić — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper explores three precedent names in Serbian culture ‒ Gavrilo Princip, Dragoljub Mihailović, and Josip Broz Tito ‒ through the lens of language’s communicative function. It’s important to note that precedent names can't be fully understood outside the context of precedent statements and texts. For that reason, the core topic of this paper is the broader phenomenon of precedent in language and culture. Since most theoretical literature on this subject comes from Russian linguistics—where the precedent phenomenon was among the earliest to be studied—our research draws primarily on Russian-language sources, including academic papers, dissertations, and monographs. The findings suggest that precedent names occupy a special place in a nation’s cultural memory, and that specific mechanisms help embed them in the collective consciousness of a cultural identity. We conclude that understanding the symbolic and iconic status of these figures is key to studying the Serbian language and culture, both in domestic and international contexts.

SUPPLEMENTARY TEACHING IN THE SERBIAN LANGUAGE ABROAD: PROBLEMS AND EXPERIENCES

Jelena M. Jovanović — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Due to the large number of Serbian emigrants abroad, the topic of supplementary teaching in the Serbian language in the diaspora is becoming a strategic issue of national education. Because of its particularity and complexity, a number of questions arise regarding planning, organisation, implementation, and teaching content, while, on the other hand, a small number of scholars are dealing with this topic. This paper discusses problems and experiences based on five years of work (from the school year 2018/2019 to the school year 2022/2023) in supplementary teaching in the Serbian language in the cities of Vicenza, Arzignano, Valdagno and Bassano del Grappa in the Republic of Italy. In addition to the organisation of teaching, its coverage by the Education Strategy until 2030, as well as the Action Plan for the period from 2023 to 2026, the applicability of textbooks and the existing curriculum, electronic databases of teaching content are analysed. Attention is drawn to the important role of parents in supplementary school, the problem of the status of teachers in the diaspora and pedagogical documentation. The aim of the paper is to shed light on the complexity and specificity of supplementary teaching abroad in order to solve existing problems and to make suggestions for its improvement.

TROPATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS IN SLAVIC MICROLANGUAGES: NATURAL AND CONSTRUCTED FEATURES

Roman Viktorovich Tarasov — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article is dedicated to means and strategies used to express tropative (a meaning ‘X considers Y to be Z’) in Slavic microlanguages, i.e. ethnolects possessing their own norm, different from those of standard languages and occupying a middle ground between natural and constructed languages. The sample of 10 microlanguages is subdivided into two halves: five authorial literature projects based on varieties of a particular area and five authorless regional ethnolects in order to compare the results for these two groups. Data were received from a short survey of language speakers, (co-) authors or users. The research has shown that these two types of microlanguages use totally different constructions. The results of the research contribute both to typology of tropative and for cross-category typology (typology of languages of different origin) in general.

INTRODUCTION. NEW TRENDS IN CONTEMPORARY SLAVIC STUDIES: METHODOLOGIES, THEMES, AND FORMS OF THOUGHT

Olja Perišić, Roberta Sala — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

WOODEN MATTER, BODILY MEMORIES AND STALINIST DYSTOPIAS: AN ECOCRITICAL INTERPRETATION OF HOMO LIGNUM BY IGOR’ MAKAREVICH

Roberta Sala — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The present paper provides an original analysis of the project Homo Lignum, by the Russian artist Igor’ Makarevich, through the lens of ecocriticism. Homo Lignum is a multimedia project that integrates various art forms, including sculpture, photography, painting, and literature. Makarevich developed this project between 1996 and 2015, continuously adding new materials and curating several exhibitions, both in Russia and abroad. Homo Lignum revolves around the fictional character of Nikolai Borisov, whose deep-seated obsession with trees and wood—significantly linked to the repressive context of Stalinism—unfolds through the pages of his diary. Manuscripts of his writings are displayed in exhibitions as part of the installations, alongside various wooden objects. Drawing on material ecocriticism—as theorized by Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann—and Stacy Alaimo’s concept of transcorporeality, this study emphasizes the socio-political significance of wooden matter and bodies in Soviet Russia. Firstly, it highlights the narrative potential of both human and non-human matter, which absorbs and reflects the dystopian effects of repressive historical forces. Secondly, it examines the agency of trees and the agentic nature of wood, emphasizing their active role in shaping human narratives and, thus, offering anti-hierarchical perspectives on non-human subjects.

INTERSENSORIAL WORLDS IN THE SHORT STORIES OF BORA STANKOVIĆ

Snežana M. Milosavljević Milić — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Starting from the current methodological assumptions of sensory and atmospheric poetics, developed within the framework of the so-called "sensual turn" in the humanities, this paper analyses the sensory aspects of the narrative worlds in Bora Stanković’s short stories. The theoretical foundation of the research is based on the concept of atmospheric perception by M. M. Ponty and G. Beme, as a specific type of synesthetic perception that does not limit experience but gives spatiality to each of our senses, as well as the new phenomenological theory of H. Schmitz on half-entities, which, as quasi-objective givens, carry a strong atmospheric potential. Stanković’s poetics of the sensual is also approached from a perspective that emphasises the connection between the sensory dimension of language and thought, and the cultural nature of their discursive representation. In this context, the typology of the five senses (sight, touch, hearing, taste, and smell) is complemented by the concept of somatic sensations and somatic experience as an important link in the triad with aesthetic and somaesthetic experience. The analysis of representative examples from the original texts confirms our assumption about Stanković’s departure from a visually-centred narrative mediation and his opening towards olfactory, haptic, auditory, and gustatory worlds. This research perspective may thus point to modernist traits of Stanković’s work that cannot be fully contained within the existing receptive paradigms of his sensualism, lyrical narration, and pronounced psychologicalism, while emphasising the importance of Bora Stanković for the genesis of fictional sensotopes in 20th-century Serbian literature.

THE NEW WORLD AFTER THE FLOOD. THE RAIN MOTIF IN THE NOVEL LAME FATE BY ARKADIJ AND BORIS STRUGACKIJ: PROPOSAL FOR AN ECOCRITICAL ANALYSIS

Giulia Baselica — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In Lame Fate (Chromaja sud’ba), a novel by Arkadij and Boris Strugackij written between 1965 and 1966, a secondary narrative—a novel within a novel—unfolds alongside the main storyline. This embedded narrative, titled Ugly Swans (Gadkie lebedi), was initially rejected by censors due to its political undertones but was later published in a Latvian magazine in 1987 under the title The Rainy Season (Vremja doždja). Set in an unnamed town subjected to relentless rainfall, Ugly Swans explores the catastrophic consequences of a great flood, which is widely attributed to the actions of the mokrecy (clammies), mysterious beings confined to a leper colony. The incessant rain is primarily perceived as a manifestation of divine retribution. Notably, only children remain unaffected by its destructive force, instead experiencing the rain as a natural, protective, and nurturing element. The rain, depicted as both a tangible and symbolic menace, ultimately compels the adult population to abandon the city. In doing so, it cleanses the accumulated corruption of civilization, eradicating any remnants of the old world. However, after the deluge subsides, a new era emerges—one bathed in sunlight, signifying renewal and the birth of a new world. This paper aims to examine the motif of rain in Lame Fate through an ecocritical lens, identifying not only its fundamental thematic implications but also the broader environmental consciousness evident throughout the Strugackij brothers’ body of work. By contextualizing the rain motif within the novel, this study seeks to illuminate its significance within the Authors’ broader philosophical and literary vision.

ARKADII DRAGOMOSHCHENKO’S POETIC LANDSCAPES AS AN INSTRUMENT OF SELF-QUESTIONING AND CROSS-CULTURAL DISPLACEMENT IN THE LATE SOVIET UNDERGROUND

Simone Guidetti — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The poetry of Arkadii Dragomoshchenko (1946–2012), who spent his formative years in Ukraine and was active in the Leningrad underground of the 1970s and 1980s, represents a unique reflection of multiple cultural practices and media perspectives. Delving deeper into common assumptions of language, thought and representation, his texts encourage the reader to take a detached and reflective approach on literary texts, overcoming the strict cultural boundaries that usually confine the text and his author in space and time. This paper draws parallels between Dragomoshchenko’s pseudo-descriptive landscape poetry, Buddhist thought, classical Chinese landscape aesthetics, and Hryhorii Skovoroda’s nomadic philosophy of paradoxes. It thus illustrates how Dragomoshchenko consciously distanced himself from the predominant understanding of culture and memory within Russian so-called vtoraia kul’tura, developing his own peculiar strategy of resistance to Soviet restrictions while also managing to avoid strict dichotomies such as pervaia and vtoraia kul’tura, official and unofficial, foreign and national culture.

CONSIDERATIONS ON RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHY TODAY

Giorgia Rimondi — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Contemporary Russian philosophy is experiencing an identity crisis, reflecting the tensions between ideology and intellectual autonomy, as clearly demonstrated by the recent conflict. The article analyzes the role of philosophy in the current context, highlighting how it is used both to legitimize political power and to promote independent critical thought. The introduction presents a brief discussion on the difficulties of defining a “Russian philosophy”, no longer confined to national borders but spread across an intellectual diaspora, including philosophers both in Russia and abroad. A central point of the discussion is the concept of the transition from the post-Soviet phase to the contemporary era. The author highlights how this transformation has fragmented the Russian philosophical landscape, divided between Soviet ideological legacies—concerning the role and tasks of the philosopher in society—and new cultural demands. The “philosophy of the front”, developed in contexts such as the 2022 roundtable in Moscow, represents an emblematic example: through themes like the “clash of civilizations”, philosophical thought reconnects to propaganda practices, adapted to the current context’s needs. However, the author emphasizes the complexities of this process, as the contemporary context makes it difficult to control the philosophical discourse entirely. A relevant aspect is the reflection on the “philosophy of war” and the ensuing debates, which reveal the polarization between those who criticize the inability of contemporary Russian philosophy to directly engage with events like the war in Donbass and those who see these conflicts as an opportunity to reaffirm Russian imperial identity. The idea of a “sovereign philosophy”, detached from external Western influences, also represents an attempt to respond to the current crisis, although it risks becoming yet another tool of power. While philosophy within Russia is called to define new horizons and directions, often influenced by nationalist rhetoric, spaces of critical resistance are also emerging. The Independent Institute of Philosophy, founded by dissident philosophers, and the work Pered licom katastrofy [Facing the Catastrophe] (2023) demonstrate how philosophical thought can still question freedom, responsibility, and truth, opposing ideological corruption. The author underscores these efforts as attempts to build a contemporary Russian philosophy capable of engaging with the global and multipolar world. Thinkers like Dobrochotov emphasize the philosopher's task of preserving fundamental concepts such as rationality, freedom, and responsibility, opposing linguistic and ideological corruption. According to this view, philosophy must transcend ideological divisions to rediscover its existential and anthropological mission, as indicated by Skorobogackij, who calls for a renewal of thought to respond to contemporary challenges. The future development of Russian philosophy will then depend on its ability to navigate this transition while maintaining a balance between tradition and critical renewal.

THE FEAST OF ENLIGHTENMENT AND FAMINE OF THE SELF (ENCOUNTER WITH THE OTHER IN THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF DOSITEJ OBRADOVIĆ)

Aleksandra S. Sekulić — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper interprets the idea of feast and hospitality in The Life and Adventures of Dimitrije Obradovic: Who as a Monk Was Given the Name Dositej. Analysing the figures of friendship, one comes to the constitutive elements of Dositej’s autonarrative that reveal a special kind of hunger and emptiness in the place where the representative self-sufficiency of the enlightened mind is expected. Enlightenment ideology of friendship also conditions the encounter with the Other, which is why in Dositej's text the friend always appears as the one who welcomes and hosts, but also the one who discovers that the subject itself does not exist outside of representativeness, outside of exemplarity. Feeding himself in the meeting with his friends, Dositej feeds his own text, remaining, in fact, the subject of hunger, essentially unsatiated and hidden behind the discourse of the Enlightenment.

EXPLORING ASPECTUAL OPPOSITION IN RUSSIAN: A CORPUS-BASED ANALYSIS OF VIDET’ VS UVIDET’ AND SLYŠAT’ VS USLYŠAT’

Valentina Noseda — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper explores the phenomenon of aspectual opposition in Russian through a corpus-based approach. Two pairs of verbs are examined: videt’.IPF-uvidet’. PF [to see] and slyšat’.IPF-uslyšat’.PF [to hear]. Data from the Russian-Italian Parallel corpus within the Russian National Corpus are statistically analyzed across four factors: context (narrative vs dialogic), object position, contiguous verb, and meaning. The aim is to identify the contexts in which the perfective forms are preferred over the imperfective counterparts. Since these verbs are atelic, the imperfective forms constitute the most natural way to express past actions, while the perfective adds an ingressive value. The analysis reveals that for both pairs, the presence of a contiguous verb and its aspect are the most significant factors influencing aspectual choice. However, for slyšat’.IPF-uslyšat’. PF, other factors also play a role, especially verb meaning. The paper further addresses the issue of determining whether these cases exemplify aspectual opposition or competition. While aspectual competition typically occurs with telic verbs where perfective and imperfective forms share identical meanings, the verb pairs under examination are argued to occupy a midpoint on a continuum between opposition and competition.

IT-SR-NER: SERBIAN-ITALIAN PARALLEL CORPUS FOR LEARNING SERBIAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Olja Perišić, Ranka Stanković — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper explores the applications of the It-Sr-NER parallel corpus in foreign language teaching. The corpus, developed in 2022 by researchers from the University of Turin and the Society for Linguistic Resources and Technologies ( JeRTeh) from Belgrade as part of the “Bridging gaps” project under CLARIN infrastructure, represents the first parallel corpus for the Italian-Serbian language pair. It contains 10.000 sentences extracted from both classical and modern Italian and Serbian literature, which have been aligned to facilitate data exploration and word translation in context. The corpus is annotated for Named Entity Recognition (NER), with special attention to toponyms (including pluralia tantum) and personal names. The study addresses three key aspects: the challenges faced by beginners due to Serbian’s rich morphology in recognising and connecting named entities with their lemmas, the utility of the corpus for intermediate and advanced learners in studying lexical gaps (words without direct translation equivalents), and the potential of NER-annotated parallel corpora as an alternative to traditional bilingual dictionaries and digital tools. The paper demonstrates how this type of corpus can serve as both an effective alternative to conventional resources and a unique tool for specific types of linguistic research.

OLD AND NEW RUSSIA. REREADING THE HISTORICAL LEGACY IN LIGHT OF THE WAR IN UKRAINE

Francesca Volpi — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation on February 24th, 2022, brought relations between Russia and the West to an unprecedented breaking point. In the days immediately preceding the invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered two speeches in which he presented a historical reconstruction of Ukrainian-Russian relations that served to legitimize the war effort. Putin's entire argumentation is centered on the denial of Ukraine as an independent state entity distinct from Russia and the bearer of an autonomous culture capable of centuries of interweaving deep relations with the peoples of Eastern Europe. This paper is dedicated to the instrumental use of history by the Russian president, who conveys a narrative of facts functional to his political conception and his idea of Russia's place in relation to Europe. Three texts are analyzed: the speech of February 1st, 2022, the annexation speech of March 18th, 2014, and the essay Ob istoričeskom edinstve russkich i ukraincev [On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians], published on the Kremlin's website in July 2021. The events of 2014 and 2022 mark the culmination of the historically complex and troubled relationship between Russia and Ukraine from 1991 to the present. The 2021 essay stands in continuity between these two moments: it constitutes the theoretical basis that Putin exploits to anticipate and justify his actions towards Ukraine; several arguments in the 2021 essay had already emerged in the 2014 speech and were taken up in full in 2022. The analysis was conducted thematically and lexically. Referring to the Discourse Historical Approach (Wodak et al. 2009, 2016), the specific historical themes to which Putin refers were identified; the discursive construction of these themes was analyzed by identifying the morphosyntactic and lexical strategies and means employed to convey the representation of a single Russian nation, which follows its own predetermined and unchanging historical path, of which Ukrainian language and culture are a part. The thesis that Russians and Ukrainians are one people is argued by emphasizing the common origin from Kievan Rus' and the presence of a shared language and religion. A direct traslatio of power from Kievan Rus' to Mus covy is presented. The fact that after the end of the Kievan Rus', the historical development of the Ukrainian lands cannot be identified with the evolution from Muscovy to the Russian state is ignored. Furthermore, the presence of an external enemy is emphasized as a dividing element between the two peoples. Finally, by resorting to the semantic fields of gift and theft, the ideology of Russian lands is taken up to argue the artificiality of the Ukrainian state and the need for Russia to reintegrate the former Soviet space.

MULTIMODAL METAPHORS AND METONYMIES IN SOVIET ANTI-ALCOHOL POSTERS: ON MATERIAL OF THE SECOND HALF OF THE TWENTIES-EARLY THIRTIES AND OF THE YEARS OF PERESTROIKA

Erica Pinelli — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The present paper is devoted to the analysis of multimodal metaphors and metonymies in Soviet anti-alcohol posters. The analysis is conducted within the Cognitive Linguistics framework, in which metaphors and metonymies are not considered as mere rhetorical devices, but as cognitive processes which allow us to understand and conceptualize the surrounding world. Recently, increasing attention has been paid to multimodal metaphors and metonymies in both commercial and social advertisements. Posters, in which both verbal and pictorial elements coexist, are suitable for a multimodal investigation. The analysis focuses on anti-alcohol posters published in two different periods of Soviet history, i.e. in the second half of the Twenties and early Thirties and in the years of perestroika. The analysis aims at identifying the type and the function of multimodal metaphors and metonymies used in Soviet anti-alcohol posters. Particular attention is also paid to the interaction between the two cognitive processes and to the role of both verbal and pictorial elements in the posters. Although the image of the bottle is a recurrent and persistent concrete pictorial element used to refer metonymically to the abstract issue of alcohol abuse, the analysis reveals that, the metaphorical representation of alcohol or alcoholism changes according to social and ideological priorities, while the cognitive structure of the posters and their interpretation become more complex over time.