Juri Lotman | |
|---|---|
 Bust of Juri Lotman by Lev Razumovsky, 1980 | |
| Born | (1922-02-28)28 February 1922 |
| Died | 28 October 1993(1993-10-28) (aged 71) |
| Education | Leningrad State University |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School |
| Institutions | University of Tartu |
Main interests | Semiotics |
Juri Lotman (Russian:Ю́рий Миха́йлович Ло́тман; 28 February 1922 – 28 October 1993) was a prominent Russian-Estonian literary scholar,semiotician, andhistorian ofRussian culture, who worked at theUniversity of Tartu. He was elected a member of theBritish Academy (1977), theNorwegian Academy of Science and Letters (1987), theRoyal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1989) and theEstonian Academy of Sciences (1990). He was a founder of theTartu–Moscow Semiotic School. The number of his printed works exceeds 800 titles. His extensive archive (now kept at theUniversity of Tallinn and at theTartu University Library) includes his correspondence with a number of Russian and Western intellectuals.
Juri Lotman was born in theJewish intellectual family of lawyer Mikhail Lotman andSorbonne-educated dentist Aleksandra Lotman inPetrograd,Russia. His elder sister Inna Obraztsova graduated fromLeningrad Conservatory and became a composer and lecturer of musical theory, his younger sister Victoria Lotman was a prominent cardiologist, and his third sister Lidia Lotman was a scholar of Russian literature of the second half of the 19th century on staff at the Institute for Russian Literature of theRussian Academy of Science (Pushkin House) (she lived in Saint-Petersburg).
Lotman graduated from the secondary school in 1939 with excellent marks and was admitted toLeningrad State University without having to pass any exams. There he studied philology, which was a choice he made due to Lidia Lotman's university friends (actually he attended university lectures in philology whilst he was still at secondary school).[citation needed] His professors at university were the renowned lecturers and academiciansGukovsky,Azadovsky,Tomashevsky andPropp. He was drafted in 1940 and duringWorld War II served as a radio operator in the artillery. Demobilized from the army in 1946, he returned to his studies in the university and received his diploma with distinction in 1950. His first published research papers focused on Russian literary and social thought of the 18th and 19th century.[citation needed]
Lotman moved to theEstonian SSR in 1950, where he started teaching Russian literature while working on his dissertation (aspirantura), which he defended at theLeningrad State University in 1952.[1][2] In 1954 he was appointeddocent in the Department of Russian literature ofTartu University, eventually becoming head of the department. In 1961 he defended hisdoctoral dissertation, also at the Leningrad State University,[3] and the following year achieved the rank ofprofessor.[4]
In the early '60s Lotman established academic contacts with a group of structuralist linguists in Moscow, and invited them in the first Summer School on Secondary Modeling Systems, that took place inKääriku from 19th to 29 August 1964.[5] The group gathered at the first summer school later developed into what is now known as theTartu–Moscow Semiotic School. Among participants of the summer school, and later members of the Tartu–Moscow school, were such names asBoris Uspensky,Vyacheslav Ivanov,Vladimir Toporov,Mikhail Gasparov,Alexander Piatigorsky,Isaak I. Revzin and Georgii Lesskis. As a result of their collective work, they established a theoretical framework for the study of thesemiotics of culture.
This school has been widely known for its journalSign Systems Studies, published byTartu University Press ("Труды по знаковым системам") and currently the oldest semiotics journal in the world (established in 1964). Lotman studied thetheory of culture, Russian literature, history,semiotics andsemiology (general theories of signs and sign systems), semiotics of cinema, arts, literature, robotics, etc. In these fields, Lotman has been one of the most widely cited authors. His major study in Russian literature was dedicated toPushkin; among his most influential works in semiotics and structuralism areSemiotics of Cinema,Analysis of the Poetic Text andThe Structure of the Artistic Text. In 1984, Lotman coined the termsemiosphere.In 1991 he received the Gold Medal of Philology, the highest award for a philological scholar.[6]
Juri Lotman's wifeZara Mints was also a well-known scholar of Russian literature and Tartu professor. They have three sons:
