The article discusses the works of Estonian Russian author Andrei Ivanov. Although he has been publishing only since 2007, he has already received a number of local and international awards, while his books have been translated into Estonian and German; also, a play based on his novel has been staged in Hamburg. Never before has an Estonian Russian author attracted so many Estonian sympathizers as evidenced by professional criticism as well as by numerous literary blogs. The article makes an attempt to analyse some specific features of Andrei Ivanov’s  writings, pointing out his alien or non-belonger status, writing as his…

The 19th century following the industrial revolution developed into a technological era, which evoked humanist protest in arts (symbolism, decadence) as well as humanities (Freud, anthropology). Literary theory was also affected as scientific logic borrowed from technology was applied to human semiotic and figurative thinking (Saussure, Wölfflin). Russian formalists had to overcome two traditions in the 19th-century literary studies, namely, a positivist adherence to facts and vulgar psychologism, neither having to do with a work of literature. Their studies addressed the author, the person behind the text. However, for them the author was not so much a person of flesh…

The article deals with the problem how to represent the morphological composition of the paradigmatic simple forms of the Estonian verb with a view to good theoretical justification and practical suitability for computer and corpus linguistics. The major issue here is systematic homonymy and underspecification. The article discusses the possible influence of paradigmatic representation on the understanding of the system of categories, comments on the imperative and jussive moods, makes an original suggestion of how to place certain morphological forms in the paradigmatic table, and points out some forms ending in -kse, which do not fit in the traditional framework.
The…

 
The article gives an overview of young scientists conferences, with a focus on the representation and participation of young folklorists. The tradition of such conferences dates back to 1974 (Institute of Language and Literature) and 1978 (Estonian Literary Museum). The overview reflects changes both in conference organization and presentation technology. It also points out the changes in research focus throughout the 40 years period. The article is based on the recollections of the participants and organizers as well as on published  sources.

 
The article discusses three literary characters inspired by historical Estonian politician Aleksander Kesküla, found in the novels „Tõde ja õigus” III (Truth and Justice III, 2009 [1936]) by Anton Hansen Tammsaare, „Dr. H. Rejsende i revolution” (Dr. H. Traveler in Revolution, 1986) by Tørk Haxthausen, and „Volta annab kaeblikku vilet” (The Plaintive Whistle of the Volta Factory, 2001) by Aarne Ruben. In all three novels, Kesküla is a secondary character, yet  fulfills a significant role in the context of the author’s more general ambitions. The depiction of Kesküla, stressing mysteriousness as his main characteristic trait, is relatively realistic in the…

 
The article addresses some etymological issues of the place names of Setumaa, which have hitherto received insufficient attention, if any. Those issues include Baltic substrate names. Attention is drawn to those names of Russian origin that reflect sound changes enabling relative dating. The article emphasizes the necessity of a systematic in-depth investigation of the stratigraphy of the whole toponymic material recorded from Setumaa, with a view to obtaining new reliable information on the settlement history of the region.

Compared to the 1960s, an analysis of today’s humorous narratives based on real-life events allows to identify some dynamic changes in community folklore. The most volatile factor in this study is the sociocultural situation: the topics of the narratives continue shifting forward in time, reflecting the experience that the community members have accumulated in life. The tradition shows a receding tendency in rural villages, but is more active in circles of colleagues or friends, in clubs and societies, etc. As far as humour theories are concerned, the most important point to make here is that the topicality of the repertoire…

Up to the present, Bernard Kangro’s Tartu novels („Springs of Ice” 1958, „The River Emajõgi” 1961, „Tartu” 1962, „The Stone Bridge” 1963, „The Black Book” 1965, and „Whirlwind of Fire” 1969), regarded as the core of his prose fiction, have been examined through a paradigm of literary movements. The goal of this article is to supplement and specify these so-called canonical treatments by an examination of the characteristics of baroque aesthetics as seen in Kangro’s last five Tartu novels. Among the features attributed to baroque literature are spatial representation of time, syncretism, a coexistence of different levels of meaning in…

The paper gives a panchronic overview of the central lexical uses and constructions related to the polysemous Estonian verb saama ‘to get’, from its first records in the written language until the present day. The paper concentrates on the main semantic categories that saama expresses in its lexical usage. The potential development paths of the central lexical meanings of saama and their interrelatedness have been outlined.
The conclusion is that based on documented written Estonian, the SUCCEED meaning has always been part of the semantic field of the verb saama, being present in the central grammatical functions of POSSIBILITY, NECESSITY, and…

In Estonian there are many Low German loanwords borrowed in the 13th–17th centuries. The present article seeks to define more exactly the period of time they entered the language. An important temporal landmark is the oldest Estonian-language printed material of the 16th–17th centuries. As literary Estonian is relatively young, we can find out the occurrence of loanwords in printed texts, but it is not possible to determine their first appearance in spoken language. It is very likely that the earliest loanwords were oral borrowings. Another temporal landmark is offered by source publications which make available the language of old manuscripts.…

Usually, literary history looks no closer than 50 years ago. Yet, as in Estonian literature the Soviet period is over it seems expedient to start studying its major facts and phenomena. One of them was the Russian-language collection of short stories „Estonskaja molodaja prosa” (Estonian young prose) published in 1978. It attracted a large response at the time – and it still does. In 1978 the collection was the focus of a two-day discussion at the USSR Union of Writers in Moscow. Modern re-semiotization of what was said and published on those authors and their oeuvre as well as on…

The article presents a hypothesis,with a considerable generalizing ambition, according to which Estonian literature tends to speak of home mainly as a missing or lost home. The author believes that there is a cleavage between the national ideological myth depicting Estonians as a people persistently staying at home for thousands of years and the home experience actually revealed in Estonian literature.
The first part of the article explains, based on the phenomenological method, the basic concepts used in the study. Homeness is defined as an experiential horizon with a spatial and an intersubjective aspect, versus homelessness as a consistent disturbance of…

The article draws on the author’s web publication Uusi unistusi eesti murde- ja folkloorialade piiritlemise teemal („More dreams on the areal division of Estonia as based on dialect words, riddles and proverbs”, http://www.folklore.ee/~kriku/TRANSPORT/Geotypo.pdf), which studies the corpora of Estonian dialect words, riddles and proverbs seeking for arguments to support the following assumption:
The peripheral/central position of geographic units, the rare/common character of the material and agglomeration/dispersal of groups formed of the geographic units are, essentially, dimensions of the same thing.
Our analysis of the Estonian data of three domains reveals two well-defined areas of language and culture and one less salient:
(1) South-Eastern Estonia in…