Keywords: 17th century, occasional poetry, anticatholicism, priests
Occasional poetry flourished in the early 17th-century Tallinn and Tartu. In Tallinn, wedding songs prevailed, while Tartu was more inclined to academic congratulations. About a third of the wedding song collections printed in either town were dedicated to acting clergy. As can be expected, congratulations for clergymen are richer in Christian motifs than the wedding poems written for representatives of other estates, yet the Christian motifs fail to overshadow the abundance of those of classical antiquity. As a matter of fact, the Christian and pagan motifs are intertwined no less closely in congratulations for…

Keywords: Library of the Estonian Literary Society, Baltic German, English, poetry, drama, reception
Based on the subclass XII (poetry and drama) of the Library of Estonian Literary Society, a Baltic German learned society (1842–1940) in Tallinn, this paper takes a look at the emergence of English literature in (Northern) Estonia. A more continuous reception of English literature in this area began in the second half of the 18th century. Although the most often mentioned publication place was London and some direct contacts can be traced with the help of inscriptions, the main part (4/5) of English literature reached the Baltic German reader via German…

Keywords: Estonian press, late 19th century, formation of political currents, censorship,  nationalism
In 1881 Ado Grenzstein started the weekly paper Olevik, which complemented Estonian press with various innovative features concerning language, contents and form. The article provides a survey of Grenzstein’s journalistic innovations, including one of the earliest Estonian evidences documenting an attempt to regulate the relations between a newspaper and its correspondents. Since the end of 1885 Grenzstein began to sense the need for a daily paper, which was expressed in his discussion over the possibilities of creating an integrated Estonian press. Karl August Hermann’s Postimees was released, since the end…

Keywords: phonology, Estonian quantity, moraic consonant, lenis, fortis, foot
The article introduces the main principles of moraic theory and the role of mora in Estonian phonology, also addressing the history of the concept ‘mora’ in theoretical linguistics. In traditional studies of metrics, the term ‘mora’ used to refer to a minimal unit of metrical time (equivalent to a short syllable). Yet according to moraic theory, mora is a unit of phonological structure, a part of the syllable, not just a measure of length. This approach allows to explain the ternary system of Estonian quantity as well as the distinction between syllable-final…

Keywords: spoken Estonian, phrasal response, clausal response, specifying question, telling question
The purpose of this article is to research responses to the wh-questions in Estonian everyday conversations.In Estonian, wh-questions are formed with sentence-initial question words (mis ‘what’, kes ‘who’, etc.). The material consists of 103 extracts collected from the Corpus of Spoken Estonian of the University of Tartu. The extracts were analysed using the methodology of conversation analysis.
The data reveals that there are two types of wh-questions in Estonian: specifying and telling questions. Hence, the study provides a confirmation of the view presented in Thompson et al. (2015). A specifying question seeks a single piece of information,…

Keywords: memoirs, Baltic German cultural history, history of reading, reading acquisition
The article discusses the references to reading and learning to read in Baltic German memoirs. It also introduces some new sources, which are particularly valuable for containing information on everyday history. The examples represent the period from the late 18th century to the interval between the two World Wars. Despite the long period of report, as well as the social diversity and gender heterogeneity of the list of authors (e.g. Baer, Anders, Schwartz, Ostwald, Hunnius, Kentmann, Hartge, Bodisco, Taube, Staden etc.) it is notable that reading and books have often been…

Keywords: moral witnessing, Ahasuerus, testimony, Ene Mihkelson, “The Sleep of Ahasuerus”, pilgrimage
Ene Mihkelson (1944–2017), one of the most philosophical authors in modern Estonian literature, has chosen the title of her novel Ahasveeruse uni (“The Sleep of Ahasuerus”) (2001) associating it with a figure from a medieval legend. The same figure occurs in the title of the story Ahasverus död (“The Death of Ahasuerus”), 1960, Estonian translation published in 1971) by Swedish Nobelist Pär Lagerkvist (1891–1974) .
While Mihkelson’s Ahasuerus sleeps or dreams (the Estonian word uni can mean either state of mind), Lagerkvist’s Ahasuerus is either dying or dead. Both titles…

Keywords: Herrnhut Brethren, Moravian movement, church history, history of religious movements, Estonian history of the 18th–19th centuries, terminology
The Herrnhut religious movement has played an important role in Estonian church history as well as in our cultural and social history at large. The relevant termin­ology has points of contact with several different disciplines. In older German the word Gemeine was widely used in parallel with Gemeinde. Thus, nowadays, German special literature contains both the proper name Brüdergemeine and the term Brüdergemeinde. The latter denotes not only the Herrnhut movement but also its local communities. In older German and to a lesser…

Keywords: uncanny homecoming, Freud, phenomenology, Estonian literature
The article addresses homecoming as described in Estonian literature. First, a brief introduction is given to the theoretical foundations of the present approach to cosily settled vs. homeless, with references to some of the author’s earlier publications. Speaking from experience, homecoming from afar is a festive, even solemn occasion – thus, its literary depiction should presumably use the festive register. The main argument of the article is that a typical case of homecoming in Estonian literature is associated with a home lost, due to which homecoming fails to meet the expectations of a celebration,…

Keywords: polysemy, grammaticalization, diachronic linguistics, construction, causation, phasal meaning, core verbs, Estonian
The article analyses the use of the Estonian core verb panema ‘put’ in written Estonian. It describes the polysemy of the verb panema and focuses on its grammatical constructions. Numerous lexical and grammatical usages of panema are presented as a network of meanings and functions.
The material for examining the verb panema was collected from corpora containing texts from the 16th century until the present. Over 3000 instances of the verb panema were included in the study. The panema instances were divided into meaning groups. Its lexical meanings are ‘to change the location of an object in space’ (the most frequent meaning…

Keywords: folklore, folkloristics, nationalism, stereotypes, curriculum, intangible cultural heritage
Differences between the basics of modern folkloristics and the public image of folklore and folkloristics in Estonia are examined. While folkloristics has given up equating nation with ethnos, Estonian public opinion doggedly holds on to the image of folklore as a reflection of the national past and expects folklorists to mediate this past to the present. These stereotypes are reinforced in schools, where folklore tends to be interpreted as forefathers’ verbal creation, but also by the concept of intangible cultural heritage gaining popularity over recent years. The exultant discourse triggered by the…