Algirdas Greimas
Algirdas Julien Greimas (; born ''Algirdas Julius Greimas''; 9 March 1917 – 27 February 1992) was a Lithuanian literary scientist who wrote most of his body of work in French while living in France. Greimas is known among other things for the Greimas Square (''le carré sémiotique''). He is, along with Roland Barthes, considered the most prominent of the French semioticians. With his training in structural linguistics, he added to the theory of signification, plastic semiotics, and laid the foundations for the Parisian school of semiotics. Among Greimas's major contributions to semiotics are the concepts of isotopy, the actantial model, the narrative program, and the semiotics of the natural world. He also researched Lithuanian mythology and Proto-Indo-European religion, and was influential in semiotic literary criticism. Biography Greimas's father, Julius Greimas, 1882–1942, a teacher and later school inspector, was from Liudvinavas in the Suvalkija region of pres ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tula, Russia
Tula ( rus, Тула, p=ˈtulə) is the largest city and the administrative center of Tula Oblast in Russia, located south of Moscow. Tula is located in the northern Central Russian Upland on the banks of the Upa River, a tributary of the Oka. At the 2010 census, Tula had a population of 501,169, an increase from 481,216 in 2002, making it the 32nd largest city in Russia by population. A primarily industrial city, Tula was a fortress at the border of the Principality of Ryazan. The city was seized by Ivan Bolotnikov, and withstood a four-month siege by the Tsar's army. Historically, Tula was a major centre for the manufacture of armaments. The Demidov family built the first armament factory in Russia in the city, in what would become the Tula Arms Plant, which still operates to this day. Tula is home to the Klokovo air base, Tula State University, Tula Kremlin, The Tula State Museum of Weapons and Kazanskaya embankment of the Upa River (). Tula has a historical association ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rastko Močnik
Rastko Močnik (born 27 August 1944) is a Slovenian sociologist, psychoanalyst, literary theorist, translator and political activist. Together with Slavoj Žižek and Mladen Dolar, he is considered one of the co-founders of the Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis.Jadžić, Miloš & Miljković, Dušan & Veselinović, Ana (eds.). (2012). ''Kriza, odgovori, levica: Prilozi za jedan kritički diskurs'', Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Southeastern Europe: Belgrade, p. 327 (in Serbian) Early life and education He was born as Josip Rastko Močnik in a middle-class family in Ljubljana. He studied sociology and history of literature at the University of Ljubljana, graduating in 1968 under the supervision of Dušan Pirjevec. During his student years, he was active in several avant-garde literary movements. In 1964, he became the last co-editor (together with the poet Tomaž Šalamun) of the alternative journal '' Perspektive'', before it was closed down by the Yugoslav government. Between 19 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. The rise of the Russian Empire coincided with the decline of neighbouring rival powers: the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Qajar Iran, the Ottoman Empire, and Qing China. It also held colonies in North America between 1799 and 1867. Covering an area of approximately , it remains the third-largest empire in history, surpassed only by the British Empire and the Mongol Empire; it ruled over a population of 125.6 million people per the 1897 Russian census, which was the only census carried out during the entire imperial period. Owing to its geographic extent across three continents at its peak, it featured great ethnic, linguistic, religious, and economic diversity. From the 10th–17th centuries, the land ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kalvarija, Lithuania
Kalvarija () is a city in southwestern Lithuania, located in the Marijampolė County, close to the border with Poland. Etymology and names Variants of the name include Kalvarijos, Kalvariya, Kalwarja, Kalvarye (Yiddish), Kalwaria (Polish), Kalvarien (German), Calvaria, Kalvaria, Kalwariya, and Kalwarya. The town is named so because it was established in the 17th century as a shrine commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus. History In 1705 the first wooden church was built. In 1713, local Jews received permission from King August II to build a synagogue and Jewish craftsmen were first permitted to practice their crafts without having to be members of the craft guilds. In 1791 Stanisław August Poniatowski recognized that Kalvarija had the right to call itself a town and confirmed the municipality's coat of arms. 1840 saw the construction of a new Catholic church, which still stands today. Kalvarija developed rapidly when the new St. Petersburg–Warsaw road was constructed tow ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Suvalkija
Suvalkija or Sudovia ( lt, Suvalkija or ''Sūduva'') is the smallest of the five cultural regions of Lithuania. Its unofficial capital is Marijampolė. People from Suvalkija (Suvalkijans, Suvalkians) are called (plural) or (singular) in Lithuanian. It is located south of the Nemunas River, in the former territory of Vilkaviškis bishopric. Historically, it is the newest ethnographic region as its most distinct characteristics and separate regional identity formed during the 19th century when the territory was part of Congress Poland. It was never a separate political entity and even today it has no official status in the administrative division of Lithuania. However, it continues to be the subject of studies focusing on Lithuanian folk culture of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Most of Lithuania's cultural differences blended or disappeared during the Soviet era (1944–1990), remaining the longest in southeastern Lithuania. The concept remains popular among Lithuanian peop ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Semiotic Literary Criticism
Semiotic literary criticism, also called literary semiotics, is the approach to literary criticism informed by the theory of signs or semiotics. Semiotics, tied closely to the structuralism pioneered by Ferdinand de Saussure, was extremely influential in the development of literary theory out of the formalist approaches of the early twentieth century. History The early forms of literary semiotics grew out of formalist approaches to literature, especially Russian formalism, and structuralist linguistics, especially the Prague school. Notable early semiotic authors included Vladimir Propp, Algirdas Julius Greimas, and Viktor Shklovsky. These critics were concerned with a formal analysis of narrative forms which would resemble a literary mathematics, or at least a literary syntax, as far as possible. They proposed various formal notations for narrative components and transformations and attempted a descriptive taxonomy of existing stories along these lines. Propp's ''Morphology of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Proto-Indo-European Religion
Proto-Indo-European mythology is the body of myths and deities associated with the Proto-Indo-Europeans, the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language. Although the mythological motifs are not directly attested – since Proto-Indo-European speakers lived in preliterate societies – scholars of comparative mythology have reconstructed details from inherited similarities found among Indo-European languages, based on the assumption that parts of the Proto-Indo-Europeans' original belief systems survived in the daughter traditions. The Proto-Indo-European pantheon includes a number of securely reconstructed deities, since they are both cognates – linguistic siblings from a common origin –, and associated with similar attributes and body of myths: such as *''Dyḗws Ph₂tḗr'', the daylight-sky god; his consort *''Dʰéǵʰōm'', the earth mother; his daughter *''H₂éwsōs'', the dawn goddess; his sons the Divine Twins; and ''*Seh₂ul'', ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lithuanian Mythology
Lithuanian mythology ( lt, Lietuvių mitologija) is the mythology of Lithuanian polytheism, the religion of pre-Christian Lithuanians. Like other Indo-Europeans, ancient Lithuanians maintained a polytheistic mythology and religious structure. In pre-Christian Lithuania, mythology was a part of polytheistic religion; after Christianisation mythology survived mostly in folklore, customs and festive rituals. Lithuanian mythology is very close to the mythology of other Baltic nations – Prussians, Latvians, and is considered a part of Baltic mythology. Sources and evidence Early Lithuanian religion and customs were based on oral tradition. Therefore, the very first records about Lithuanian mythology and beliefs were made by travellers, Christian missionaries, chronicle writers and historians. Original Lithuanian oral tradition partially survived in national ritual and festive songs and legends which started to be written down in the 18th century. The first bits about Baltic ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Actantial Model
__NOTOC__ In structural semantics, the actantial model, also called the actantial narrative schema, is a tool used to analyze the action that takes place in a story, whether real or fictional.Herbert 2006 ''Tools'', Ch.5, ''Origins and function''Herbert 2006 ''Actantial'' It was developed in 1966 by semiotician Algirdas Julien Greimas. The model considers an action as divided into six facets, called actants. Those actants are a combined framework inspired mainly between Vladimir Propp's and Étienne Souriau's actantial theories. Greimas took the term ''actant'' from linguist Lucien Tesnière, who coined the term in his discussion of the grammar of noun phrases.David Herman, Manfred Jahn, Marie-Laure Ryan (2005''Routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory'' p. 574 Basic Summary Greimas actantial model distinguishes characters and action elements according to their function within the plot. The model differentiates between *Subject / Object *Helper / Opponent *Sender / Receiver *Pow ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Isotopy (semiotics)
In a story, we detect an ''isotopy'' when there is a repetition of a basic meaning trait ( seme); such repetition, establishing some level of familiarity within the story, allows for a uniform reading/interpretation of it. An example of a sentence containing an isotopy is ''I drink some water''. The two words ''drink'' and ''water'' share a seme (a reference to liquids), and this gives homogeneity to the sentence. This concept, introduced by Greimas in 1966, had a major impact on the field of semiotics, and was redefined multiple times.Introduction'' to Greimas, aSigno Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni extended the concept to denote the repetition of not only semes, but also other semiotic units (like phonemes for isotopies as rhymes, rhythm for prosody, etc.). Umberto Eco showed the flaws of using the concept of "repetition", and replaced it with the concept of "direction", redefining isotopy as "the direction taken by an interpretation of the text". Redefinitions The concept was ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sign (semiotics)
In semiotics, a sign is anything that communicates a meaning that is not the sign itself to the interpreter of the sign. The meaning can be intentional, as when a word is uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, as when a symptom is taken as a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can communicate through any of the senses, visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or taste. Two major theories describe the way signs acquire the ability to transfer information. Both theories understand the defining property of the sign as a relation between a number of elements. In the tradition of semiotics developed by Ferdinand de Saussure (referred to as semiology) the sign relation is dyadic, consisting only of a form of the sign (the signifier) and its meaning (the signified). Saussure saw this relation as being essentially arbitrary (the principle of semiotic arbitrariness), motivated only by social convention. Saussure's theory has been particularly influential in the study o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Semiotics
Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes ( semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something, usually called a meaning, to the sign's interpreter. The meaning can be intentional such as a word uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can also communicate feelings (which are usually not considered meanings) and may communicate internally (through thought itself) or through any of the senses: visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or gustatory (taste). Contemporary semiotics is a branch of science that studies meaning-making and various types of knowledge. The semiotic tradition explores the study of signs and symbols as a significant part of communications. Unlike linguistics, semiotics also studies non-linguistic sign systems. Semiotics includes th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |