Uncensored? Reinventing Humor and Satire in Post-Soviet Russia is a wide-ranging scholarly analysis of humor and satire in Russia during the regimes of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. The volume brings together an international group of emerging scholars and established authorities in the fields of Russian humor, satire, and popular culture, who explore a broad range of post-Soviet media and genres (such as literature, folklore, film, television, journalism, estrada comedy, and rock music). The book's contributors pose a wide array of related questions: What are the functions of humor and satire in Russia's "post-censorship" environment? To what extent are contemporary Russian satirical writers and performers free to express themselves? What (and who) are the principal targets of post-Soviet humorous and satirical production? Viewed as a whole, the articles in Uncensored? present a series of compelling observations of the socio-political climate in post-Soviet Russia through a shared topical prism of humor and satire. About the editors: Olga Mesropova teaches Russian language, literature, and culture at Iowa State University. Her publications on Russian cinema and popular culture have appeared in the Russian Review, Slavic and East European Journal, and Canadian Slavonic Papers. She is the author of Kinotalk: Russian Cinema and Conversation (Slavica, 2006) and is currently completing a monograph on Soviet and post-Soviet stand-up comedy. Seth Graham teaches Russian culture and language at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. He has published articles on cinema, literature, and humor, and his book Resonant Dissonance: The Russian Joke in Cultural Context was published in 2009 by Northwestern University Press. This book is recommended for library collections at colleges and univer¬sities, as well as larger public library systems.
2008
$39.95
978-0-89357-362-1
488
2008
Up the Devil's Back: An Anthology of 20th Century Czech Poetry presents 65 selected Czech poets in English translation, together with their biographies. Co-translated and edited by Bronislava Volková (Professor of Czech literature, Comparative literature and Jewish studies at Indiana University) and Clarice Cloutier (Professor of Central European literature and culture at New York University [Prague campus] and Lecturer at Charles University, Prague), this volume seeks to give a sense of the evolution undergone by Czech poetry throughout the decades. Beginning with the Symbolism and Decadence of the 1890s and ending with the most recent generations, this collection explores the remarkable breadth of literary approaches to the pervasive themes of the 20th century. Featuring renowned poets such as Seifert, Up the Devil's Back compiles female poets alongside males and exiled authors together with those who remained in the Czech Republic under the totalitarian regime. Whether used in the classroom, by travelers to the Czech Republic or as a coffee-table companion, this anthology serves as a resource for scholars in Slavic studies, an accompaniment to those in comparative literature and a guide for all into one of Central Europe's literary storehouses. "These poems are more than an expression of a series of individual talents: above all they bear witness to a culture whose survival in the calamitous twentieth century is nothing less than a miracle. The same might be said of the publication of this anthology." From the Afterword by Alfred Thomas, Professor of English, University of Illinois, Chicago
1999
$34.95
978-0-89357-277-8
240
1999
Texts handed down from generation to generation in manuscript form must be asked the fundamental question "Of two readings, which is more likely to have been corrupted into the other?" This question, which can be traced at least as far as Erasmus of Rotterdam's critical commentaries on the Gospels, examines directionality of change in text transmission, paramount to all other considerations in establishing texts. It guides the student to the fundamental accidents of manuscript transmission of texts and leads him to recognise such otherwise elusive phenomena as coincidental variation in unrelated manuscripts. Without a considered response to this question, no claim as to a text's authenticity can be validated. The study examines three texts, written by the second and third generations of Slavic literati, Constantine of Preslav's "Prologue" to the Gospel Homiliary (Pliska, before AD 893) and the anonymous texts "On The Script" and "On The Letters", based on the former (both Preslav, before ca. 935). It provides a computer&endash;aided reconstruction (described step by step) of the prehistory of 154 Cyrillic manuscripts (12th - 19th centuries), and distills from it the data furnished by 13–16 eyewitnesses to the originals, written in Glagolitic script. As the texts are initmately concerned with the Slavic alphabet, it also examines the evidence they provide as to its earliest reconstructible state and its subsequent development. At every juncture, the study shows which conclusions can and cannot be drawn from the comprehensive analysis of the history of the transmission of the texts. The inquiry presupposes nothing but fundamental reading skills of Church Slavic. It progressively builds up insight into both the Cyrillic renderings and the Glagolitic originals of the texts, as well as the problems of comprehension of their idiolects. All Church Slavic data are provided with English translations; wherever available, Greek sources, models or parallels are given in full. A comprehensive glossary and a detailed subject index make this a handbook for any student of Church Slavic language and literature, history of text transmission and acculturation. William R. Veder teaches Slavic linguistics at the University of Amsterdam. His publications include The Scaliger Paterikon (4 vols., English and Church Slavic, incl. facsimiles, Zug, 1976–1984), The Edificatory Prose of Kievan Rus' (English, together with A.A. Turilov, Cambridge 1994) and Church Slavic and Its Texts (Russian, together wirh A.S. Gerd, St. Petersburg 1999). For his achievements in Slavic textual criticism, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Veliko Turnovo.
CONTENTS:
Introduction 5
The Texts 7
Visions of Textology 9
Textology and Textual Paleontology 14
Searching for Compatibility 16
The Witnesses 16
Recording Testimonies 20
Sorting Testimonies 22
Identifying Variation 26
Establishing and Explaining Variants 32
Establishing Compatibility 36
Establishing Direct Filiation 40
Establishing Contamination 44
Establishing Incompatibility 50
Incompatibility in P and S 52
Reconciling Incompatibilities 56
The Edition 59
Text and Commentary The Prologue to the Gospel Homiliary 61
The Text On The Script and the Treatise On The Letters 88
The Reconstructed Texts P: The Prologue to the Gospel Homiliary 153
S: The Text On the Script 158
L: The Treatise On the Letters 159
The Three Alphabets 168
Conclusion The Dating and Localisation of the Works 179
The Beginnings of Transmission 182
The Development of the Text 186
The Transmission of the Language 189
Epilogue 191
Appendices
Word Index to the Texts 193
Bibliography 229
Subject Index 235
