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„Popi and Huhuu” ning tema eelkäija eesti kirjanduses

Author(s): Pille-Riin Larm / Language(s): Estonian Issue: 10/2012

The short story „Popi and Huhuu” (1914) by Friedebert Tuglas can be considered the crown of the canon of Estonian short stories. Yet up to now nobody has pointed out its resemblance to an anonymous pastime story Ahvi armastus ja kättemaksmine („The love and revenge of a monkey”) published in the literary magazine Meelejahutaja in 1881. To gain new knowledge about the birth of „Popi and Huhuu” and to clarify the relations of Tuglas with his preceding generation, the so-called epigons, the two stories are compared, using influence criticism’s method. It appears that Tuglas, however overtly sensitive to authenticity problems and inimical towards his predecessors, was closely bound to them by his borrowing one of their motifs. The spread of attitudes, ideas, motifs and plots during the decades between the pastime story and Tuglas’s short story demonstrates a huge development in Estonian literary thought. Nevertheless, the advent of Tuglas and the other representatives of Young Estonia did not mean a total break from the past, as they were also epigons, in a positive sense, carrying on from their predecessors: Estonian short prose had been playing with grand symbols long before the Young Estonians modernist project, although falling short of great abstractions or a truly artistic effect. Even the ideas known from the Young Estonians’ manifesto were in the air and expressed in the cultural press of the late 19th century.

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Aated ja stiiliotsingud: ekspressionism 1920. aastate eesti teatris

Author(s): Luule Epner / Language(s): Estonian Issue: 17/2015

In Estonian theatre, the experience of World War I found expression somewhat belatedly, in the early 1920s, when Expresssionist plays, mainly by contemporary German playwrights – Ernst Toller,Walter Hasenclever, Georg Kaiser et al – were staged in the Estonia Theatre, in the Drama Theatre and in the amateur Hommikteater (Morning Theatre, 1921–1924). The article examines the most significant Expressionist stage productions, focusing on the relations between their ideological, affective and stylistic dimensions. Critical and audience receptions of Expressionist plays are discussed as well.In the Estonia Theatre, a group of young actors and directors(Ants Lauter, Erna Villmer, et al) sought to innovate theatrical language by making use of new, Expressionist devices. In contrast, the amateur Hommikteater (led by August Bachmann and Nigol Andresen)placed emphasis on spreading the ideals of new humanity and social justice, which reflected the left-wing sympathies of the troupe , but their work was also distinguished by an inventive style and a strong emotional impact on audiences. The members of the literary group Tarapita (who promoted Expressionism themselves)enthusiastically supported Hommikteater. This little theatre became highly influential in the process of theatre innovation, despite its very small audiences.However, the key ideas and ideals of postwar Expressionism (including a strong anti-war pathos) had rather little effect on Estonian theatre in general. Expressionism mainly contributed to the widening of the stylistic palette of Estonian theatrical art. This can be partly explained by the social situation of the 1920s: victory in the War of Independence and the subsequent building of the independent Estonian state raised nationalist spirits and made people less sensitive to the destructive experiences of World War I as reflected in postwar German Expressionism.

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Found in Translation: The Reception of Andrei Ivanov’s Prose in Estonia

Author(s): Anneli Kõvamees / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2016

Andrei Ivanov (b. 1971) is the most well known Estonian Russianlanguage writer who has won many literary awards in Estonia and Russia. His prose and position in the literary field of Estonia has initiated the discussion about the exact definition of Estonian literature and the status of the Estonian Russian-language literature. Due to Ivanov’s prose, the world of Estonian Russians has become more visible for the Estonian audience. He also gives a piercing look into the modern society and offers a different perspective on the world; these are some of the reasons of his popularity. The article focuses on the analysis of the reception of Ivanov’s prose published in Estonian. The vast majority of Ivanov’s prose has been translated into Estonian: Путешествие Ханумана на Лолланд, Харбинские мотыльки, Бизар, Исповедь лунатика, Горсть праха, Печатный шар Расмуса Хансена, Мой датский дядюшка and Зола. The author has entered the Estonian cultural field through translations, it may be said that he has been found in translations. Ivanov’s books are bestsellers and widely discussed in newspapers, blogs and in the literary magazines. The position of Estonian Russian literature has shifted from the periphery into the spotlight and the works by Ivanov have played a decisive role in that process. The article focuses on the analysis of the reception of Ivanov’s prose published in Estonian. The articles published in the Estonian language and concentrating on his prose (both in newspapers and in the literary magazines) are under observation. What topics have been discussed? Which aspects of Ivanov’s prose have attracted the attention of the critics?

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Polüfunktsionaalne pidama-verb XVII sajandi kirjakeeles

Author(s): Külli Habicht,Külli Prillop / Language(s): Estonian Issue: 62/2016

The article deals with differences in form between the lexical and grammatical meanings of the verb pidama ‘keep; consider; must, have to’ in 17th-century Estonian. Our approach is usage-based, relying on material from the Corpus of Old Written Estonian. We focus on the usage of past tense forms of the polysemous verb pidama in 17th-century North Estonian texts. The aim is to explain the background of the divergence in form between the two meanings of pidama in use today, as well as the relationships between its modal meanings. We assume that the influential translated religious texts of the 17th century created a tradition of usage of frequently occurring morphosyntactic constructions, wherein the choice of form emerged from the vernacular. The analysis reveals that the lexical and modal meanings of pidama were distinguished as early as in the first half of the 17th century. This especially concerns the simple past tense forms of the verb, in particular the form pidi, which has become clearly associated with modal meanings. The construction consisting of the past tense form of pidama and a main verb typically in the ma-infinitive (a.k.a. supine) form performed different grammatical functions in 17th-century written Estonian. An influence of the text type can be seen in that the most common meaning associated with pidama constructions was predetermination. This meaning is also a bridging context between deontic (obligation/compulsion) and epistemic modal meanings. The epistemic usage, typical of past tense forms of pidama in the 17th-century written language, has been supported both in meaning and in form by the German subjunctive, which indicates contact-driven grammaticalization. The past tense forms of the verb pidama indicate, in addition to the most frequent predetermination, also participant-external deontic possibility, epistemic necessity and possibility, and indirect evidentiality, which can be regarded as a post-modal meaning. The study reveals that the writers of the first half of the 17th century used authentic constructions to express modal and post-modal meanings, but gave their individual interpretations to these constructions.

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Johann Samuel Friedrich Boubrigi süntaksiloengud Tartu ülikoolis

Author(s): Heli Laanekask / Language(s): Estonian Issue: 62/2016

The article gives a detailed overview of the lectures on Estonian syntax delivered by Johann Samuel Friedrich Boubrig, Estonian language lecturer at the University of Tartu, in the spring semester of 1829. The description of the content of the lectures is based on the manuscripts of the lectures and several other archive materials stored in the Estonian Cultural History Archives at the Estonian Literary Museum. The article also takes a look at the linguistic literature related to the lectures, particularly the syntax chapter in August Wilhelm Hupel’s Ehstnische Sprachlehre (1818), articles in the journal Beiträge zur genauern Kenntniß der ehstnischen Sprache, and other publications. At that time, the Estonian language was taught at the University of Tartu as a target language, not as a mother tongue, with German as the source language of teaching. Boubrig built up his lectures on syntax as comments to the syntax part in Hupel’s Ehstnische Sprachlehre; he corrects or supplements Hupel, presents additional examples and refers to contemporary linguistic literature. First, Boubrig attempts to formulate general regularities derived from the language and then to watch their manifestations in actual usage. He calls his method philosophical linguistic research and is critical of linguists who do not rely on the philosophy of language but formulate inflexible rules about many isolated phenomena in language. Boubrig disputes Hupel’s statement that Estonian syntax is similar to other European languages and says the syntax of Estonian, as one of the Finnic languages, differs greatly from the syntax of ancient and modern languages. Boubrig does not present parallels with other Finno-Ugric languages in his lectures, but he compares Estonian syntax with German, French and Latin. As these languages were familiar to students and enjoyed the status of highly cultured languages, we can regard these comparisons as an educational device with the wish to enhance the prestige of the Estonian language. There is a strong German-Estonian contrastive approach. Boubrig discusses in greater detail numerous features of Estonian that differ from German: use of numerals, negation, case syntax (particularly object cases), use of infinitives and participles, word order, etc. The Estonian examples that Boubrig presents in his lectures have often been recorded from word of mouth but also from religious or linguistic literature. The manner of presentation is descriptive and normative. Boubrig repeatedly emphasises the peculiarity of the Estonian language and the need for deeper study of it. His university lectures reflect the contemporary linguistic thought in Estonia: agile, searching, valuing the Estonian language, innovative and polemical.

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Ema ja isa rahvakeelsed nimetused

Author(s): Vilja Oja / Language(s): Estonian Issue: 62/2016

In 20th-century Estonian dialects, in familiar informal speech, the words nänn, nann, eit, äidi (and other variants), emm, memm, mamma (mammi), moor, and mutt (muti) were used as synonyms for the standard ema ‘mother’, while the words ätt, att, taat, tata, tätä, and papa (papi) were used as synonyms for the standard isa ‘father’. The oldest of these are eit, emm, nänn ‘mother’ and ätt, taat ‘father’ along with other variants of these stems. Alongside the older words, also used in 20th-century Estonian were the relatively recent German loans mamma and papa, which were regarded as snobbish until roughly the middle of the century. In the 1960s, the Estonian caregiver speech forms emme ‘mum’ < ema and a bit later issi ‘dad’ < isa began to grow in popularity. Today, these have evolved into nearly standard terms of endearment. The informal names are typically used only family-internally, and therefore neutral, so-called formal terms of address are preferred when talking to strangers. The concept of ‘parents’ was expressed in the vernacular typically by a coordinate structure, such as eit ja taat, memm ja taat, mamma-papa etc., literally ‘mother and father’. Some of these were used in particular dialect regions, e.g. nänn ja ätt in the Mulgi dialect, emm ning taet on the island of Saaremaa, eit ja at́t on Kihnu. The meaning shifts ‘mother’ > ‘grandmother’ and ‘father’ > ‘grandfather’ are connected with the introduction of new words denoting mother and father. The choice of names has also been influenced by the dialect background of the parent or grandparent or the tradition of his/her hometown/region and family. In addition, the meaning of these words has expanded to also cover notions such as ‘lady/man of the house; spouse; old woman/man’. In some cases, polysemous foreign words are borrowed with the polysemy preserved, e.g. moor < Estonian Swedish mor ‘mother; woman; wife’. In Estonian, we find the same structures as in many Indo-European and Turkic languages: words for ‘father’ are often formed from syllables containing the plosive p (b) or t (d) and the vowel a, while words for ‘father’ have the nasal morn instead of the plosive. Some of the words used in Estonian are borrowings, although not all of their origins are clear. Names for parents which resemble one another in structure and phonemic composition in numerous languages not in contact with one another are considered to derive from local child or caregiver language forms. The analysis of Estonian words for ‘mother’ and ‘father’ compared to the equivalents in related and contact languages indicates that the division of longtime dialect words into the categories of “formal” and “informal” is quite complicated and may eliminate interesting opportunities for comparison.

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Õ-tähe teest meie kirjakeelde

Author(s): Valve-Liivi Kingisepp / Language(s): Estonian Issue: 62/2016

The article explains that the pastor of Äksi, the writer Otto Wilhelm Masing (1763–1832), proposed in his Ehstnische Originalblätter für Deutsche (Original Estonian texts for Germans) (1816) that a separate letter, not included in the standard Latin alphabet, be taken into use for the Estonian õ sound. Masing hailed from the eastern Estonian dialect region, where the õ sound is more common than in other dialects. This could be one of the reasons why Masing noted the importance of õ in Estonian and began searching for a way to mark it in writing. Masing knew Russian, which has the õ sound and a corresponding letter for it, and indeed made his suggestion following the example of Russian. On the basis of Masing’s letters to J. H. Rosenplänter, the article describes the search for a suitable form for the letter intended to denote the õ sound. The article examines how Masing explained his suggestions for the improvement of the Estonian orthography in his German-language writings and the criticism that these suggestions received from his contemporaries. The critical or supportive reviews of J. A. Hirschhausen, W. F. Steingrüber, and J. H. Rosenplänter are summarized, attention is given to the opinions of the founder of the new orthography Eduard Ahrens, and examples are given of the journey of the letter õ into written Estonian as connected to the popularization of the new orthography in the 19th century. The õ sound in Estonian was first published in the form in O. W. Masing’s Pühhapäwa Wahhe-luggemissed (1818). In July 1819, the typesetter Carl Michler suggested to Masing the form õ, which is still in use today.

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Rahvapärimus ja multimeedia eesti kaasaegses kultuuris

Author(s): Anneli Mihkelev / Language(s): Estonian Issue: 1/2017

The legends of the kratt or the treasure-bearer have existed in lively oral tradition in Estonian culture for a very long time. These myths and legends have traversed from the oral tradition to literary works, visual culture and music. All these texts on the kratt exist in the culture as metatexts which create the world of the kratt, where different cultural memories and interpretations are intertwined. This means that the kratt as a cultural text is also a multimedial text.Different media use different tools and this makes the interpretations more playful and interesting. Andrus Kivirähk’s novel “Old Barnyor November” (2000) is the central literary work on the kratt in contemporary Estonian literature. Kivirähk combines the mythical kratt with Old Barny (Rehepapp), who is the unofficial leader of the village and a cunning manor house barn-keeper. There are several cultural texts based on Kivirähk’s novel, but the most important are the opera “Old Barny” (2013) by Tauno Aints, the libretto by Urmas Lennuk, and the film “November” (2016) by Rainer Sarnet. The ballet “Kratt” (1943; 2015) by Eduard Tubin is more contemporary inits setting and represents everyday life in the modern factory. The article analyses how different multimedial texts about the kratt and Old Barny use and combine multimedia to create and convey the social meaning of the kratt, and how multimedia use audio-visual poetics to convey a greater number of emotions and aesthetic values in the cultural text. The film by Rainer Sarnet and the ballet by Eduard Tubin represent harmony with different poetics factors and the meanings of the cultural texts.

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How to Write Soviet Estonian Art History: Three Attempts, from Stalinism through the
Khrushchev Thaw and Beyond

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How to Write Soviet Estonian Art History: Three Attempts, from Stalinism through the Khrushchev Thaw and Beyond

Author(s): Virve Sarapik / Language(s): English Issue: 03+04/2015

This paper aims to give an introduction to the Estonian art history writing of the Soviet era. Various influences defined the creation of Estonian art history as an ideologically appropriate and coherent narrative. The most significant of these highlighted in this paper are institutional aspects, the impact of local cultural tradition, and time: important shifts in ideological coercion and control mechanisms. An analysis of the relationships between the norms and deviations of Soviet-era Estonian art history writing is conducted mainly through comparison with the completion of various editions of the history of Estonian literature.

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Literature Defined by Language? Some Remarks on the Definition of Estonian Literature

Author(s): Anneli Kõvamees / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

In the era when multiculturalism is one of the key concepts and the relationship between foreign and own is shifting, the definition of national literature has been in the centre of discussions. In Estonia the issue has been raised most prominently in connection with the Estonian Russianlanguage writer Andrei Ivanov (born 1971) whose works have turned out to be difficult to classify. How to define Estonian literature? Is it a literature written in the Estonian language, literature written by Estonians, literature associated with Estonia or is it a literature written in Estonia? Especially small nations like Estonians tend to define one’s identity according to the language spoken and ethnicity, not the citizenship. There are various significant shifts in Estonian literary history, for example, when the beginning of Estonian literature is discussed, then Baltic German authors are included but when the Estonian literature made by Estonians is born in the 19th century, Baltic German literature disappears from Estonian literature, although Baltic German literature continued until the 20th century. The aspect of value plays a significant role, as what is included or excluded in the literary history is associated with ideological choices. It is only recently that the inclusion of Baltic German literature into Estonian literature is taking place. The position of Estonian Russian literature has also shifted from rejection and periphery in the spotlight and the works by Andrei Ivanov have played a crucial role in that process. Taking the Estonian Russian-language literature and Baltic German literature as examples, the article addresses the question of defining (national) literature.

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A Small Literature in the Service of Nation-Building: the Estonian Case

Author(s): Arne Merilai,Katre Talviste / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

The idea of Estonia’s cultural and national self-sufficiency emerged in the nineteenth century. The contribution of writers and poets was essential to this development. Literature anticipated not only cultural, linguistic, and artistic, but also the economic and political emancipation of Estonians. Cultural practices leading to this emancipation were largely based on Baltic German models; many key elements to the independent Estonian national identity are of foreign origin. On the one hand, the nineteenth-century nationbuilding could therefore be described as self-colonization. On the other hand, it rather created a new nation than transformed a preexisting one, since the very concept of national identity was introduced by this process. Through various political and cultural upheavals, the most influential authors from this seminal period of the Estonian modern culture have remained iconic to this day. The traditional identification with them is so strong that the tentative origins of the nation and the identitary struggles of the national poets themselves may often be forgotten and the personal and individual nature of their contribution downplayed.

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ANALÜÜTILISED TULEVIKUTARINDId 17.–18. SAJANDI PÕHJAEESTI KIRJAKEELES

Author(s): Liina Pärismaa / Language(s): Estonian Issue: 64/2018

This article is part of a broader morphosyntactic study and deals with analytic saama ’get, become’, pidama ’must, have to’, tahtma ’want’ and võtma ’get’ constructions which express future tense in Old Written Estonian. This study also focuses on elucidation of the future forms used by the 17th century author Christoph Blume. The study is usage-based and relies on the framework of historical sociolinguistics. The material used in the study is comprised of 610 tagged examples from 17th and 18th century ecclesiastical and didactic texts, which are from the corpuses of Old Written Estonian and the Concordance of Estonian Bible Translations. It was found that the literary language reform influenced the more native and even use of future tense. Although abrupt changes in the expression of future tense occurred from the end of the 17th century, e.g. the usage proportion of the German-influenced saama future construction decreased considerably, although it never fully disappeared, early indications in that direction can also be seen in the middle of the 17th century in the texts of Blume.

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Folk Tradition and Multimedia in Contemporary Estonian Culture

Author(s): Anneli Mihkelev / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

The legends of the kratt or the treasure-bearer have existed in lively oral tradition in Estonian culture for a very long time. These myths and legends have traversed from the oral tradition to literary works, visual culture and music. All these texts on the kratt exist in the culture as metatexts which create the world of the kratt, where different cultural memories and interpretations are intertwined. This means that the kratt as a cultural text is also a multimedial text. Different media use different tools and this makes the interpretations more playful and interesting. Andrus Kivirähk’s novel Rehepapp (The Old Barny, 2000) is the central literary work on the kratt in contemporary Estonian literature. Kivirähk combines the mythical kratt with the figure of Old Barny (rehepapp), who is the unofficial leader of the village and a cunning manor house barn-keeper. There are several cultural texts based on Kivirähk’s novel, but the most important are the opera Rehepapp (2013) by Tauno Aints, libretto by Urmas Lennuk, and the film November (2016) by Rainer Sarnet. The 2015 production of the ballet Kratt (1943) by Eduard Tubin is more contemporary in its setting and represents everyday life in the modern factory. The article analyses how different multimedial texts about the kratt and Old Barny use and combine multimedia to create and convey the social meaning of the kratt, and how multimedia use audio-visual poetics to convey a greater number of emotions and aesthetic values in the cultural text. The film by Rainer Sarnet and the ballet by Eduard Tubin represent harmony with different poetics factors and the meanings of the cultural texts.

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Zweisprachigkeit in den Literaturen Estlands

Author(s): Liina Lukas / Language(s): German Issue: 1/2021

In a multilingual cultural space such as the (former and contemporary) Baltic region, bilingualism, both oral and written, has been rather normality than exception. This also finds an expression in the literatures of this region. In the following I will examine the phenomenon of bilingualism and multilingualism in the literatures of Estonia in history and today. First, I will examine the historical forms of bilingualism before the foundation of the Republic of Estonia, against the background of the complicated oral and written language relations throughout history. Then I explore their topicality in the interwar and Soviet periods, and today. I also ask about the motivation of the authors to change or mix languages in their work, whether to reach a wider audience or a new poetic quality. Examples are from the work of Paul Fleming, Reiner Brockmann, Jacob Johann Malm, August Kitzberg, Ivar Ivask, Jaan Kaplinski, Igor Kotjuh, Øyvind Rangøy and Veronika Kivisilla.

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A. H. Tammsaare’s Epic Musicality

Author(s): Arne Merilai / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

A. H. Tammsaare was drawn to the musical tonality of prose. Importantly though, he did not wholeheartedly embrace sound patterning as a mode of writing. Rather, he preferred a semantic widening of ordinary language within a comprehensively holistic “spherical music”. In his novels, we can detect a deliberate use of rhythmic motion in sentences. This is evident primarily in the wealth of lexical and syntactic repetitions resulting in a parallelism of patterns. An obvious, although discreet, rhythmic design emerges in the thesis-antithesis-synthesis parataxis the core words of which are the adversative and coordinating conjunctions aga (‘but’), and integrative ometi (‘yet’, ‘indeed’). The frequency with which these bound conjunctions occur in Tammsaare’s work surpasses that of ordinary speech by about four times, and it is twice as high as the statistical mean for literary texts. One might call this expressive of an epic but-mantra, a prose-poetic but-meter, or a narrative polysyndeton, and, from a philosophical point of view, a but-dialectic. Whenever a reader fails to appreciate Tammsaare’s underlying tone and does not discern the emotional flow of longing scepticism that issues from his dyadic-triadic chains, this pervasive, yet inconspicuously arguing, textual mode may seem unduly pretentious. Indeed, there is nothing to prevent a prose text from featuring a poetic style that is rooted in a poetry-like, paradigmatic parallelism as the poetic principle of formal and semantic equivalence.

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Siirdeaegsed valupunktid kirjandusteoste peeglis: Gohar Markosjan-Käsperi romaanid „Penelopa“ ja „Elena“

Author(s): Aigi Heero / Language(s): Estonian Issue: 1/2021

Gohar Markosjan-Käsper (1949–2015), an Armenian-Estonian writer, is generally considered to be a representative of Estonian Russian-language literature. Her novels “Penelopa” (1998) and “Elena” (2000) deal with a period of transition, when the Soviet Union ceased to exist and the construction of a market-oriented society began. The present study analyses how and with what techniques these novels depict the historical events and everyday life in Estonia and Armenia. The article shows how describing the history of Estonia and Armenia with universal, internationally common motives helps to discuss the Soviet legacy and to understand the traumatic experience of transition from one form of society to another. For example, the Soviet occupation in Estonia is explained with the metaphor of domestic violence and the Estonian monetary reform in 1992 is compared to track racing with unequal participants. At the same time, the sometimes differing experiences of the Estonian and Armenian people are compared. The transition period is portrayed as a tough time filled with daily struggle. On the one hand, there are economic and domestic problems; on the other hand, the grief caused by the collapse of a familiar world is addressed. The new era also offers opportunities to speak directly about the traumatic experiences of the past such as World War II. Although several years have passed since the transition, many of the problems of this period have not yet been resolved. These novels show that sometimes there is a way to come to terms with the past with the help of art, literature, and, of course, friends and family. Thus, these books speak not only of sociohistorical pain points, but also of strength, endurance, and wisdom.

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Tõlkekirjanduse vahendamisest ja vastuvõtust Eestis aastatel 1990–2000 saksakeelse kirjanduse näitel

Author(s): Triin van Doorslaer / Language(s): Estonian Issue: 1/2021

In 1991, when Estonia regained its independence, the situation in the translation market changed dramatically. The number of translations rose rapidly, the conventional translation methods were changed, and the translated books of fiction acquired a central position in the system of Estonian culture as well as in the landscape of Estonian literature. Translations became a part of the Estonian literature, and they were often seen as original texts. At the same time translations tended to lose their own identity as translated texts. The aim of this article is to find out whether the social and cultural systems of the target culture (translators, publishers, critics) were supporting literary translations as such, since they involved specific type of texts, representing rather the source culture than the target culture, yet becoming a part of the literature of the target culture. The situation of the publishing houses in Estonia between 1990–2000 and the importance of translations, particularly German translations over the mentioned period is analysed and translation criticism of the translated works from German into Estonian between 1990–2000 in the Estonian press is discussed. Finally, it could be said that changes in the Estonian social and cultural system 1990–2000 gave a boost to new topics in literature. The position of translated literature was significant, taking the central position in the Estonian literary polysystem and acquired partly the role of the original Estonian literature. It is also important to mention that during the discussed period translation criticism in the Estonian press and literary journals was mainly replaced by general literary criticism.

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Korüfee ja tema kirjad

Author(s): Sirje Olesk / Language(s): Estonian Issue: 01/2012

Review of: Artur Adson. Friedebert Tuglas. Paaži ja Felixi kirjavahetus 1917-1944. Tallinn: Underi ja Tuglase Kirjanduskeskus, 2011. 614 lk.

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XIX sajandi pilk XX sajandi kirjandusele XXI sajandil

Author(s): Johanna Ross / Language(s): Estonian Issue: 01/2012

Review of: Rein Veidemann. 101 Eesti kirjandusteost. Tallinn: Varrak, 2011. 224 lk.

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Haiguse temaatika ja metafoorika Madis Kõivu dramaturgias

Author(s): Piret Kruuspere / Language(s): Estonian Issue: 1/2024

The aim of this article is to analyse the dramaturgy of Estonian writer, physicist and philosopher Madis Kõiv (1929–2015), including selected texts of his prose and essays. My approach derives from the autobiographical as well as socio-political point of view, set in the context of the Estonian transition period. Studying Kõiv’s plays that were brought on stage mainly in the 1990s, the article explores the subject matter of illness (tuberculosis, neurosis) and associated motifs (corporeality, disability, trauma, fright) as well as metaphorical symptoms of illness (nausea etc) in his works. This research is based on the method of close-reading and studies of cultural semantics, including stereotypes and metaphors of illness (Sontag), as well as studies of autobiographical aspects in the depiction of illness/disability (Couser, Annuk). Focusing on Kõiv’s play “Tagasitulek isa juurde” (“Return to the Father”) and his short story “Juhtum” (“An Incident”), corresponding and comparative examples are presented from his other works. Kõiv’s individually masterful and aesthetically fresh approach, namely the use of motifs and metaphors of illness, has amplified the interpretation, and extended the connotations of Estonian national history and collective memory in drama and theatre. Following Couser, an autopathographical point of view – emphasizing the significance of autobiographical narratives of illness in the wider context of social and collective memory – has proved to be relevant in the study of Kõiv’s plays. On the one hand, the metaphor of illness per se is emphasized in the context of the cataclysms of Estonian national history. On the other hand, Kõiv offers ways of healing through absurdity and even dark humour.

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