Companion to Juri Lotman

Juri Lotman (1922–1993), the Russian-Estonian literary scholar, cultural historian and semiotician, was one of the most original and important cultural theorists of the 20th century, as well as a co-founder of the well-known Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics. This is the first authoritative volume to explore Lotman’s work and discuss his main ideas and intellectual legacy in the context of contemporary scholarship.

Boasting an interdisciplinary cast of academics from across the globe, the book is structured into three main sections – Context, Concepts and Dialogue – which simultaneously provide ease of navigation and intriguing prisms through which to view Lotman’s various scholarly contributions. Saussure, Bakhtin, Language, Memory, Space, Cultural History, New Historicism, Literary Studies and Political Theory are just some of the thinkers, themes and approaches examined in relation to Lotman, while the introduction and Lotman bibliography in English that frame the main essays provide valuable background knowledge and useful information for further research.

The Companion to Juri Lotman shines a light on a hugely significant and all-too often neglected figure in 20th-century intellectual history.

Marek Tamm is Professor of Cultural History at Tallinn University, Estonia. He has recently published Rethinking Historical Time: New Approaches to Presentism (ed. with Laurent Olivier, 2019), Juri Lotman – Culture, Memory and History: Essays in Cultural Semiotics (ed., 2019) and A Cultural History of Memory in the Early Modern Age (ed. with Alessandro Arcangeli, 2020).

Peeter Torop is Professor of Semiotics of Culture at the University of Tartu, Estonia. He is Co-Editor of the Sign Systems Studies journal and the Tartu Semiotics Library book series.