Keywords: family relationships, life narrative, life writing, personal experience stories, trauma

Recent public debates on family-related issues (What constitutes a traditional family? How widespread is domestic violence? What is the purpose of child protective services?) prompted an examination of these themes from the perspective of people’s personal experience. The article is based on manuscripts of life narratives obtained from the collection of Estonian Life Histories in the Estonian Cultural History Archives (EKM EKLA, f 350). The narratives were written down between 1989 and 2017 and provide a glimpse into the societal changes that took place between the 1930s and the early 21^st century. The favoured narrative techniques and the ways these changed at the end of the 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century also become apparent. The article compares Estonian narratives with Finnish ones. The comparison is aided by similar collection methods used both for Estonian and Finnish stories – these are thematic narratives archived by volunteer correspondents. More specifically, the focus is on generational conflicts present in life narratives.

Family relationships (including conflicts) are revealed in the narratives through the lens chosen by the narrator. It seems that family relationships were overshadowed by political issues in Estonian life stories narrated in the 1990s: the narrators concentrated on descriptions of people’s relationship with the Soviet power, including repressive experiences. In the early 2000s, this perspective receded, allowing more space for descriptions of relationships within the family. Depictions of post-war childhood sometimes suggest that children who grew up separately from their mother due to economic, social or other reasons never developed a close bond with her. In narratives collected in 2017, the narrator often looks at her life experience both as a daughter and a mother. In such cases, the focus of the narrative shifts from the relationship between herself and her mother to the development of the narrator as a person.

The comparison between Finnish and Estonian stories reveals that Finnish families tended to remain silent on difficult circumstances, whereas Estonian narratives emphasized the parents’ ability to explain difficult situations to children. Comparing the stories also pointed to a change in the family structure and functions in the 20^th century: the pre-war family model included the parents and the children, while in wartime and post-war families, the mother had to take on the father’s former responsibilities. In Finnish research, this is addressed through the lens of trauma studies (e.g., the aggressiveness of the exhausted single mother towards her children). In Estonia, the issue is seen through the framework of the impact of political repressions on a person’s life. However, the trauma discourse is also evident in Estonian narratives. That is, if the narrators themselves have used corporal punishment on their own children. In such cases, the focus is not so much on the events that took place as on a perception of changing values.

 

Tiiu Jaago (b. 1960), PhD, Associate Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tiiu.jaago@ut.ee

Keywords: life after death, categories of time, travels in the land of the dead, religious tales

The article presents a comparative historical analysis of fairy tales of the Friends in Life and Death (ATU/SUS 470) plot type, their features and distribution among Belarusians, Russians and Estonians. In the Estonian and Belarusian material, stories of this type are in some cases contaminated with the ATU 470A and 471A types.

We examine differences in the flow of time in the real world and other worlds, and consider the features of the chronotope of fairy tales and the organization of artistic space within them, as well as ways of transition and communication between the worlds.

According to the most common plot of ATU/SUS 470 fairy tales, two friends promise to be guests at each other’s weddings. One of them dies and the living friend invites the dead one to his wedding; however, after receiving a counter-invitation, he finds himself in another world. There he either travels with the deceased friend through his world, where he sees various curiosities and paradoxes, or celebrates at the wedding of the deceased friend. It seems to the living person that he spent several hours with the deceased friend (or with his brother or father in some Estonian versions), but when he returns to his own world, he discovers that decades or centuries have passed on Earth. Most often, after this discovery, the hero dies and turns to dust, but there are some rare Estonian versions where he miraculously restores ­himself and his bride to their original state (and age), after which they get married again.

 

Alena Boganeva (b. 1964), PhD, Yakub Kolas Institute of Linguistics of the Center for the Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Head of the Department of Ethnolinguistics (Surhanava 1, Corpus 2, 220072 Minsk, Belarus), elboganeva@gmail.com

Mare Kõiva (b. 1954), PhD, Estonian Literary Museum, Lead Research Fellow of the Department of Folkloristics, acting head of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian ­Studies (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), mare@folklore.ee

Keywords: rhetoric, „The Anxiety of Influence”, irony, metonymy, metaphor, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man

The inspiration for this article came from Jüri Talvet’s observation that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s „Faust” and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald’s „Kalevipoeg” show some remarkable similarities in their philosophical structure and plot. This article therefore aims to compare these two masterpieces by using Harold Bloom’s and Paul de Man’s understanding of tropes. While allusion and intertextuality studies typically focus on a limited number of similarities between two texts, Bloom’s anxiety of influence theory helps to apprehend both texts as a whole. This objective is achievable with two constraints. Firstly, making such a comparison requires us to widen our understanding of tropes. In this analysis, tropes do not signify limited transfers of meaning (from one word to another), but the full transformation of a text’s meaning. The background to this article lies in the hypothesis that large chunks of ­„Kalevipoeg” can be read as tropes that are derived from the verses of „Faust”. ­Secondly, this kind of analysis cannot focus on the style, genre or semantic nuances of both works, but only on the general picture: the stories and their protagonists. The anxiety of influence theory shows that the change of meaning from one work to another can be described by means of two kinds of tropes: limiting and repeating ones. In this article, the limiting tropes of irony, metonymy and metaphor can be used to depict the change of meaning from „Faust” to „Kalevipoeg”. The story of an intellectual who makes a pact with the devil, seeks absolute love and wishes to accomplish godly deeds becomes a story of a mythically strong hero who has no choice, never finds true love and achieves predestined greatness. According to Bloom, this is only half of the comparison. In a follow-up article, I will show how the repeating tropes of synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis can be used to demonstrate that the fate of these different protagonists is in fact somewhat similar.

 

Tõnis Parksepp (b. 1987), MA, freelance dramatist; University of Tartu, doctoral student at the Institute of Cultural Research (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tonisparksepp@gmail.com

Keywords: semantic types, polysemy, lexicography, lexicology, perception adjectives, corpus linguistics, Estonian

The article aims to identify the patterns of systematic polysemy for Estonian tactile adjectives using semantic types and corpus data. It also discusses the presentation of semantic patterns in a dictionary. This will help to provide a theoretical basis for lexicographers and to align the presentation of adjective polysemy in dictionaries. The dataset for the study consists of 265 tactile adjectives.

The corpus manager and text analysis software Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004, 2014) is used for corpus context analysis. The program allows to observe the collocations of a word based on various statistics, to generate word sketches, and to study words used in similar contexts by means of the thesaurus function. To find the patterns, semantic types are assigned to meanings and similarities are searched between meaning shifts. For tagging the adjective meanings, the semantic types developed to describe Estonian (polysemous) adjectives (Tuulik 2014; Tuulik, Langemets 2016) are used, and for noun meanings, the semantic types of the Estonian noun developed by Margit Langemets (2010) are used. The research method used for analyzing polysemy in the article is of a practical nature and has grown out of real-life lexicographical work.

A total of 13 polysemy patterns emerged in the tactile adjective group. The most common shift was from tactile characteristics to psychological characteristics (in the sense structure of 43 words). Shifts could be observed from pleasant tactile sensations to positive mental characteristics (e.g pehme padi ‘soft pillow’, pehme loomuga ‘soft-natured’) and from unpleasant touch experience to mentally unpleasant experience (okkaline roos ‘thorny rose’, okkaline iseloom ‘thorny character’). The study of systematic polysemy points to a strong link between the domains of tactile touch and feelings.

The lexicographic presentation of polysemous patterns varied. The pattern was represented as: 1) two distinct primary meanings; 2) primary meaning and submeaning(s); 3) a common aggregate meaning; 4) systematic polysemy that appeared in the corpus but was not presented. The analysis showed that lexicographers may perceive and present one and the same pattern in different ways; therefore, familiarity with polysemy patterns associated with the respective semantic type could contribute to a more systematic presentation.

 

Maria Tuulik (b. 1985), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer (Roosi­krantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), maria.tuulik@eki.ee

Keywords: usage-based linguistics, corpus linguistics, language planning, corpus planning, verb government, Estonian

For over a century, attempts have been made in Estonian language planning to standardize the oblique case selection of verbs (traditionally: verb government), but variation persists in actual language use. In this paper we look at the case selection patterns of a number of verbs, with which variation is said to occur without any semantic difference.

We look at the historical process of how corpus planning has decided on the “right” case-selection and compare it to actual language use from 1900–1939 and 2019–2021. Our analysis shows that variation is still present in the 2019–2021 data. A detailed multifactorial analysis of variation between comitative or allative marking of the oblique argument of the verb sarnanema ‘to resemble’ reveals that the most important factor affecting the choice between the two is in fact semantic, which has remained unnoticed by language planners for over a century. Language planners should therefore systematically take into account the results of linguistic research (based on actual language use), and linguists, in turn, should pay attention to variations in Standard Estonian in order to provide new input for language planners.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher, Language Planner (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Liina Lindström (b. 1973), PhD, University of Tartu, Professor of Modern Estonian Lan­guage (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), liina.lindstrom@ut.ee

Keywords: autobiographical writings, modernity, nature, vernacular literarcy

The article looks at nature references in texts written in the 1890s by two men born in the middle of the 19^th century: namely, the autobiographical writings of farmer and school teacher Paulus Paurmann (1850–1903), and the diary of miller Märt Siipsen (1846–1916). Paurmann and Siipsen can be called vernacular literati – despite their poor education they were eager to participate in the modern literary sphere as both readers and writers. Both men depended on nature in their livelihood – this combined with their interest in contemporary literary matters makes them good examples of the spread of modern ideas about nature among the lower social classes. 

The influence of these ideas can manifest in at least three different ways: (1) as an interest in modern scientific ideas; (2) as a wish to shape nature – plant new species, apply new technologies; (3) by using nature (as well as poetic language stemming from nature) to express one’s identity, to position oneself with respect to modern identity markers.

In Siipsen’s text we can see two different ways of positioning oneself in relation to nature: passive (religious) and active (practical). In some passages he states that everything which happens in nature depends on God, whereas in others he describes attempts at designing his surroundings by adding new plants and birds. The relationship between the two remains ambiguous. 

Paurmann has written two autobiographies. The earlier one uses a lot of descriptions of and metaphorical references to nature and its composition adheres to the poetics of sentimental chapbooks; the latter one is written in plain language and barely mentions nature at all. That is to say, references to nature in his writings depend on the chosen poetic language.

In conclusion, we can see that both men have incorporated into their writings certain new ideas about nature that were disseminated in the written discourse at the time. Siipsen mostly describes new ways of designing one’s farmyard, whereas Paurmann turns to poetic uses of nature.

 

Katre Kikas (b. 1981), MA, Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folklore Studies, Researcher (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), katre.kikas@folklore.ee

Keywords: 21st century literature, eco-fiction, citizen science, ornithology

The article compares birdwatchers’ experience of nature with the natural environment as conveyed in literary fiction. The source materials comprise, first of all, interviews conducted with (mostly amateur) Estonian birdwatchers and, secondly, contemporary Estonian and Swedish literary fiction: Maarja Pärtna’s prose poetry collection “The Living City” (Elav linn, 2022), Andrus Kivirähk’s book “Flight to the Moon” (Lend Kuule, 2022), Tõnis Tootsen’s novel “Pâté of the Apes: One Primate’s Thoughts and Memories” (Ahvide pasteet, 2022) and Kerstin Ekman’s novel “The Wolf Run” (Löpa varg, 2021; Estonian translation 2022). The focus is on whether and how the concerns of nature observers relate to anxiety about changes in the natural environment as expressed in contemporary literature. Amateur environmental ­science projects aim to draw attention to concerns about the natural environment and climate change and thereby strive for a smaller personal environmental impact. Eco-fiction, in turn, puts environmental issues into words, setting them into a fathomable, although perhaps altogether unexpected scale: hence, eco-prose and -poesy are essential ways of perceiving that also serve to interpret the ongoing changes.

Environment-oriented literary culture has responded to issues with the natural environment before. Now, too, it can be concluded that environmental concerns have made a forceful entry into literature. All of the above-mentioned authors have found their unique way of conceptualizing our home in an era of environmental crises. Their recently published works tell stories about our surroundings and interpret the present situation; they discuss the anthropocentric viewpoint or depict the human focus from an unexpected perspective; they draw attention to our alien­ation from nature; they reposition the reader and thereby seek solutions to environmental issues. Among other things, they highlight environmentally friendly ways of living and experiencing the world or look at the world through non-human eyes, thus bringing the narrator closer to other forms of being. The writers share with birdwatchers the post-humanist idea of the equality of species as well as a sharp eye for their subject.

 

Elle-Mari Talivee (b. 1974), PhD, Estonian Academy of Sciences, Under and Tuglas ­Literature Centre, Senior Researcher (Väikese Illimari 12, 11623 Tallinn); Tallinn University, Research Fellow, ellemari@utkk.ee

Keywords: Estonian literature, curricula, literary education, Soviet schools, ideology, identity

The article looks at changes in the literature curriculum throughout the Soviet occupation. It discusses the content of the curricula, the ideological context, as well as the proportion of the curriculum dedicated to literary education. Due to the sheer volume of the material available, the article limits itself to mapping out the topic: whether and how the ideological emphases evolved during different periods (Stalinism, the Khrushchev Thaw, the Era of Stagnation); the ratio of Russian (Soviet) to Estonian authors covered in the literary curriculum; the educational system paradoxes involved in literature as a school subject that allows for the expression of certain views.

Three observations are drawn in conclusion.

Firstly, in ideological and party-led education, literature lessons held a special place in Soviet schools. Literature – alongside history – was considered the most important subject for shaping the students’ views.

Secondly, a remarkable portion of the curriculum was allotted to literary education conceived in this manner, to make sure that the mandated authors could be discussed in depth. Without doubt, this involved communist instruction – the intensity of which varied greatly depending on the head of school, the teachers and the decade at hand. However, Estonian literature, especially the literary classics, could still be covered extensively alongside the ideological instruction.

Thirdly, literature lessons evolved into a sphere for the discussion of Estonian nationhood, owing to the fact that the accepted authors represented seminal texts, the examination of which made it possible to also talk about Estonian literary history. In the history of teaching and studying Estonian literature, the Soviet era was particularly notable for its emphasis on literary classics, which undeniably played a crucial role in the preservation of national identity.

The article also notes that Estonian literature largely lost this role in general education schools after Estonia regained its independence.

 

Maarja Vaino (b. 1976), PhD, literary scholar and Director of Tallinn Literary Centre ­(Koidula 12a, 10125 Tallinn), maarja.vaino@gmail.com

Keywords: 1960 Song Festival, exile, Eduard Tubin, cultural relations, splitted society, Soviet influence measures

Khrushchev’s policy of building cultural relations with the West opened up a possibility for communication between Estonians home and abroad in the late 1950s. From the Soviet perspective, this contact was aimed at weakening the anti-Soviet attitudes of refugee organizations and splitting the community that fled to the West. As a consequence of the non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, a portion of the community was determined not to visit their homeland until it was free. Another part, however, did not see much wrong with a trip to their native land. The disagreements and internal divisions of the community inspired the Soviet officials to influence the refugees in different ways. Making use of people’s homesickness and their wish to see friends and family, a number of people were selected for positive inclusion through cultural contact and other means in order to encourage other refugees to follow their example and change their behaviour and attitudes. The 1960 Song Festival seemed like a perfect opportunity to invite people to visit their homeland. The Festival was also meant to coax the acclaimed conductor and composer Eduard Tubin to visit Estonia.

However, the Song Festival failed to activate communication to the desired degree and Tubin also refused to participate. The manipulation of Tubin, which focused on his professional motivation and connections with former colleagues and acquain­tances, finally bore fruit in December 1961. The Ministry of State Security of the Estonian SSR considered this a breakthrough in changing the attitudes of the exiles, as the “emigrant leaders” reacted to Tubin’s visit with calls to refrain from visiting Estonia, which in turn sowed resentment among those who were looking forward to visiting their homeland and deepened internal contradictions. The debate that erupted around attending the Song Festival in Tallinn as well as Tubin’s trip to Estonia brought into view the fragmentation of the Estonian diaspora, the existential concerns of people living in exile that the Soviet authorities deliberately amplified in order to use them for their benefit through various influence operations.

 

Aigi Rahi-Tamm (b. 1965), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of History and Archaeology, Professor of Archival Studies (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), aigi.rahi-tamm@ut.ee

Keywords: family relationships, life narrative, life writing, personal experience stories, trauma

Recent public debates on family-related issues (What constitutes a traditional family? How widespread is domestic violence? What is the purpose of child protective services?) prompted an examination of these themes from the perspective of people’s personal experience. The article is based on manuscripts of life narratives obtained from the collection of Estonian Life Histories in the Estonian Cultural History Archives (EKM EKLA, f 350). The narratives were written down between 1989 and 2017 and provide a glimpse into the societal changes that took place between the 1930s and the early 21^st century. The favoured narrative techniques and the ways these changed at the end of the 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century also become apparent. The article compares Estonian narratives with Finnish ones. The comparison is aided by similar collection methods used both for Estonian and Finnish stories – these are thematic narratives archived by volunteer correspondents. More specifically, the focus is on generational conflicts present in life narratives.

Family relationships (including conflicts) are revealed in the narratives through the lens chosen by the narrator. It seems that family relationships were overshadowed by political issues in Estonian life stories narrated in the 1990s: the narrators concentrated on descriptions of people’s relationship with the Soviet power, including repressive experiences. In the early 2000s, this perspective receded, allowing more space for descriptions of relationships within the family. Depictions of post-war childhood sometimes suggest that children who grew up separately from their mother due to economic, social or other reasons never developed a close bond with her. In narratives collected in 2017, the narrator often looks at her life experience both as a daughter and a mother. In such cases, the focus of the narrative shifts from the relationship between herself and her mother to the development of the narrator as a person.

The comparison between Finnish and Estonian stories reveals that Finnish families tended to remain silent on difficult circumstances, whereas Estonian narratives emphasized the parents’ ability to explain difficult situations to children. Comparing the stories also pointed to a change in the family structure and functions in the 20^th century: the pre-war family model included the parents and the children, while in wartime and post-war families, the mother had to take on the father’s former responsibilities. In Finnish research, this is addressed through the lens of trauma studies (e.g., the aggressiveness of the exhausted single mother towards her children). In Estonia, the issue is seen through the framework of the impact of political repressions on a person’s life. However, the trauma discourse is also evident in Estonian narratives. That is, if the narrators themselves have used corporal punishment on their own children. In such cases, the focus is not so much on the events that took place as on a perception of changing values.

 

Tiiu Jaago (b. 1960), PhD, Associate Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tiiu.jaago@ut.ee

Keywords: life after death, categories of time, travels in the land of the dead, religious tales

The article presents a comparative historical analysis of fairy tales of the Friends in Life and Death (ATU/SUS 470) plot type, their features and distribution among Belarusians, Russians and Estonians. In the Estonian and Belarusian material, stories of this type are in some cases contaminated with the ATU 470A and 471A types.

We examine differences in the flow of time in the real world and other worlds, and consider the features of the chronotope of fairy tales and the organization of artistic space within them, as well as ways of transition and communication between the worlds.

According to the most common plot of ATU/SUS 470 fairy tales, two friends promise to be guests at each other’s weddings. One of them dies and the living friend invites the dead one to his wedding; however, after receiving a counter-invitation, he finds himself in another world. There he either travels with the deceased friend through his world, where he sees various curiosities and paradoxes, or celebrates at the wedding of the deceased friend. It seems to the living person that he spent several hours with the deceased friend (or with his brother or father in some Estonian versions), but when he returns to his own world, he discovers that decades or centuries have passed on Earth. Most often, after this discovery, the hero dies and turns to dust, but there are some rare Estonian versions where he miraculously restores ­himself and his bride to their original state (and age), after which they get married again.

 

Alena Boganeva (b. 1964), PhD, Yakub Kolas Institute of Linguistics of the Center for the Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Head of the Department of Ethnolinguistics (Surhanava 1, Corpus 2, 220072 Minsk, Belarus), elboganeva@gmail.com

Mare Kõiva (b. 1954), PhD, Estonian Literary Museum, Lead Research Fellow of the Department of Folkloristics, acting head of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian ­Studies (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), mare@folklore.ee

Keywords: rhetoric, „The Anxiety of Influence”, irony, metonymy, metaphor, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man

The inspiration for this article came from Jüri Talvet’s observation that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s „Faust” and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald’s „Kalevipoeg” show some remarkable similarities in their philosophical structure and plot. This article therefore aims to compare these two masterpieces by using Harold Bloom’s and Paul de Man’s understanding of tropes. While allusion and intertextuality studies typically focus on a limited number of similarities between two texts, Bloom’s anxiety of influence theory helps to apprehend both texts as a whole. This objective is achievable with two constraints. Firstly, making such a comparison requires us to widen our understanding of tropes. In this analysis, tropes do not signify limited transfers of meaning (from one word to another), but the full transformation of a text’s meaning. The background to this article lies in the hypothesis that large chunks of ­„Kalevipoeg” can be read as tropes that are derived from the verses of „Faust”. ­Secondly, this kind of analysis cannot focus on the style, genre or semantic nuances of both works, but only on the general picture: the stories and their protagonists. The anxiety of influence theory shows that the change of meaning from one work to another can be described by means of two kinds of tropes: limiting and repeating ones. In this article, the limiting tropes of irony, metonymy and metaphor can be used to depict the change of meaning from „Faust” to „Kalevipoeg”. The story of an intellectual who makes a pact with the devil, seeks absolute love and wishes to accomplish godly deeds becomes a story of a mythically strong hero who has no choice, never finds true love and achieves predestined greatness. According to Bloom, this is only half of the comparison. In a follow-up article, I will show how the repeating tropes of synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis can be used to demonstrate that the fate of these different protagonists is in fact somewhat similar.

 

Tõnis Parksepp (b. 1987), MA, freelance dramatist; University of Tartu, doctoral student at the Institute of Cultural Research (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tonisparksepp@gmail.com

Keywords: semantic types, polysemy, lexicography, lexicology, perception adjectives, corpus linguistics, Estonian

The article aims to identify the patterns of systematic polysemy for Estonian tactile adjectives using semantic types and corpus data. It also discusses the presentation of semantic patterns in a dictionary. This will help to provide a theoretical basis for lexicographers and to align the presentation of adjective polysemy in dictionaries. The dataset for the study consists of 265 tactile adjectives.

The corpus manager and text analysis software Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004, 2014) is used for corpus context analysis. The program allows to observe the collocations of a word based on various statistics, to generate word sketches, and to study words used in similar contexts by means of the thesaurus function. To find the patterns, semantic types are assigned to meanings and similarities are searched between meaning shifts. For tagging the adjective meanings, the semantic types developed to describe Estonian (polysemous) adjectives (Tuulik 2014; Tuulik, Langemets 2016) are used, and for noun meanings, the semantic types of the Estonian noun developed by Margit Langemets (2010) are used. The research method used for analyzing polysemy in the article is of a practical nature and has grown out of real-life lexicographical work.

A total of 13 polysemy patterns emerged in the tactile adjective group. The most common shift was from tactile characteristics to psychological characteristics (in the sense structure of 43 words). Shifts could be observed from pleasant tactile sensations to positive mental characteristics (e.g pehme padi ‘soft pillow’, pehme loomuga ‘soft-natured’) and from unpleasant touch experience to mentally unpleasant experience (okkaline roos ‘thorny rose’, okkaline iseloom ‘thorny character’). The study of systematic polysemy points to a strong link between the domains of tactile touch and feelings.

The lexicographic presentation of polysemous patterns varied. The pattern was represented as: 1) two distinct primary meanings; 2) primary meaning and submeaning(s); 3) a common aggregate meaning; 4) systematic polysemy that appeared in the corpus but was not presented. The analysis showed that lexicographers may perceive and present one and the same pattern in different ways; therefore, familiarity with polysemy patterns associated with the respective semantic type could contribute to a more systematic presentation.

 

Maria Tuulik (b. 1985), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer (Roosi­krantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), maria.tuulik@eki.ee

Keywords: usage-based linguistics, corpus linguistics, language planning, corpus planning, verb government, Estonian

For over a century, attempts have been made in Estonian language planning to standardize the oblique case selection of verbs (traditionally: verb government), but variation persists in actual language use. In this paper we look at the case selection patterns of a number of verbs, with which variation is said to occur without any semantic difference.

We look at the historical process of how corpus planning has decided on the “right” case-selection and compare it to actual language use from 1900–1939 and 2019–2021. Our analysis shows that variation is still present in the 2019–2021 data. A detailed multifactorial analysis of variation between comitative or allative marking of the oblique argument of the verb sarnanema ‘to resemble’ reveals that the most important factor affecting the choice between the two is in fact semantic, which has remained unnoticed by language planners for over a century. Language planners should therefore systematically take into account the results of linguistic research (based on actual language use), and linguists, in turn, should pay attention to variations in Standard Estonian in order to provide new input for language planners.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher, Language Planner (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Liina Lindström (b. 1973), PhD, University of Tartu, Professor of Modern Estonian Lan­guage (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), liina.lindstrom@ut.ee

Keywords: autobiographical writings, modernity, nature, vernacular literarcy

The article looks at nature references in texts written in the 1890s by two men born in the middle of the 19^th century: namely, the autobiographical writings of farmer and school teacher Paulus Paurmann (1850–1903), and the diary of miller Märt Siipsen (1846–1916). Paurmann and Siipsen can be called vernacular literati – despite their poor education they were eager to participate in the modern literary sphere as both readers and writers. Both men depended on nature in their livelihood – this combined with their interest in contemporary literary matters makes them good examples of the spread of modern ideas about nature among the lower social classes. 

The influence of these ideas can manifest in at least three different ways: (1) as an interest in modern scientific ideas; (2) as a wish to shape nature – plant new species, apply new technologies; (3) by using nature (as well as poetic language stemming from nature) to express one’s identity, to position oneself with respect to modern identity markers.

In Siipsen’s text we can see two different ways of positioning oneself in relation to nature: passive (religious) and active (practical). In some passages he states that everything which happens in nature depends on God, whereas in others he describes attempts at designing his surroundings by adding new plants and birds. The relationship between the two remains ambiguous. 

Paurmann has written two autobiographies. The earlier one uses a lot of descriptions of and metaphorical references to nature and its composition adheres to the poetics of sentimental chapbooks; the latter one is written in plain language and barely mentions nature at all. That is to say, references to nature in his writings depend on the chosen poetic language.

In conclusion, we can see that both men have incorporated into their writings certain new ideas about nature that were disseminated in the written discourse at the time. Siipsen mostly describes new ways of designing one’s farmyard, whereas Paurmann turns to poetic uses of nature.

 

Katre Kikas (b. 1981), MA, Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folklore Studies, Researcher (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), katre.kikas@folklore.ee

Keywords: 21st century literature, eco-fiction, citizen science, ornithology

The article compares birdwatchers’ experience of nature with the natural environment as conveyed in literary fiction. The source materials comprise, first of all, interviews conducted with (mostly amateur) Estonian birdwatchers and, secondly, contemporary Estonian and Swedish literary fiction: Maarja Pärtna’s prose poetry collection “The Living City” (Elav linn, 2022), Andrus Kivirähk’s book “Flight to the Moon” (Lend Kuule, 2022), Tõnis Tootsen’s novel “Pâté of the Apes: One Primate’s Thoughts and Memories” (Ahvide pasteet, 2022) and Kerstin Ekman’s novel “The Wolf Run” (Löpa varg, 2021; Estonian translation 2022). The focus is on whether and how the concerns of nature observers relate to anxiety about changes in the natural environment as expressed in contemporary literature. Amateur environmental ­science projects aim to draw attention to concerns about the natural environment and climate change and thereby strive for a smaller personal environmental impact. Eco-fiction, in turn, puts environmental issues into words, setting them into a fathomable, although perhaps altogether unexpected scale: hence, eco-prose and -poesy are essential ways of perceiving that also serve to interpret the ongoing changes.

Environment-oriented literary culture has responded to issues with the natural environment before. Now, too, it can be concluded that environmental concerns have made a forceful entry into literature. All of the above-mentioned authors have found their unique way of conceptualizing our home in an era of environmental crises. Their recently published works tell stories about our surroundings and interpret the present situation; they discuss the anthropocentric viewpoint or depict the human focus from an unexpected perspective; they draw attention to our alien­ation from nature; they reposition the reader and thereby seek solutions to environmental issues. Among other things, they highlight environmentally friendly ways of living and experiencing the world or look at the world through non-human eyes, thus bringing the narrator closer to other forms of being. The writers share with birdwatchers the post-humanist idea of the equality of species as well as a sharp eye for their subject.

 

Elle-Mari Talivee (b. 1974), PhD, Estonian Academy of Sciences, Under and Tuglas ­Literature Centre, Senior Researcher (Väikese Illimari 12, 11623 Tallinn); Tallinn University, Research Fellow, ellemari@utkk.ee

Keywords: Estonian literature, curricula, literary education, Soviet schools, ideology, identity

The article looks at changes in the literature curriculum throughout the Soviet occupation. It discusses the content of the curricula, the ideological context, as well as the proportion of the curriculum dedicated to literary education. Due to the sheer volume of the material available, the article limits itself to mapping out the topic: whether and how the ideological emphases evolved during different periods (Stalinism, the Khrushchev Thaw, the Era of Stagnation); the ratio of Russian (Soviet) to Estonian authors covered in the literary curriculum; the educational system paradoxes involved in literature as a school subject that allows for the expression of certain views.

Three observations are drawn in conclusion.

Firstly, in ideological and party-led education, literature lessons held a special place in Soviet schools. Literature – alongside history – was considered the most important subject for shaping the students’ views.

Secondly, a remarkable portion of the curriculum was allotted to literary education conceived in this manner, to make sure that the mandated authors could be discussed in depth. Without doubt, this involved communist instruction – the intensity of which varied greatly depending on the head of school, the teachers and the decade at hand. However, Estonian literature, especially the literary classics, could still be covered extensively alongside the ideological instruction.

Thirdly, literature lessons evolved into a sphere for the discussion of Estonian nationhood, owing to the fact that the accepted authors represented seminal texts, the examination of which made it possible to also talk about Estonian literary history. In the history of teaching and studying Estonian literature, the Soviet era was particularly notable for its emphasis on literary classics, which undeniably played a crucial role in the preservation of national identity.

The article also notes that Estonian literature largely lost this role in general education schools after Estonia regained its independence.

 

Maarja Vaino (b. 1976), PhD, literary scholar and Director of Tallinn Literary Centre ­(Koidula 12a, 10125 Tallinn), maarja.vaino@gmail.com

Keywords: 1960 Song Festival, exile, Eduard Tubin, cultural relations, splitted society, Soviet influence measures

Khrushchev’s policy of building cultural relations with the West opened up a possibility for communication between Estonians home and abroad in the late 1950s. From the Soviet perspective, this contact was aimed at weakening the anti-Soviet attitudes of refugee organizations and splitting the community that fled to the West. As a consequence of the non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, a portion of the community was determined not to visit their homeland until it was free. Another part, however, did not see much wrong with a trip to their native land. The disagreements and internal divisions of the community inspired the Soviet officials to influence the refugees in different ways. Making use of people’s homesickness and their wish to see friends and family, a number of people were selected for positive inclusion through cultural contact and other means in order to encourage other refugees to follow their example and change their behaviour and attitudes. The 1960 Song Festival seemed like a perfect opportunity to invite people to visit their homeland. The Festival was also meant to coax the acclaimed conductor and composer Eduard Tubin to visit Estonia.

However, the Song Festival failed to activate communication to the desired degree and Tubin also refused to participate. The manipulation of Tubin, which focused on his professional motivation and connections with former colleagues and acquain­tances, finally bore fruit in December 1961. The Ministry of State Security of the Estonian SSR considered this a breakthrough in changing the attitudes of the exiles, as the “emigrant leaders” reacted to Tubin’s visit with calls to refrain from visiting Estonia, which in turn sowed resentment among those who were looking forward to visiting their homeland and deepened internal contradictions. The debate that erupted around attending the Song Festival in Tallinn as well as Tubin’s trip to Estonia brought into view the fragmentation of the Estonian diaspora, the existential concerns of people living in exile that the Soviet authorities deliberately amplified in order to use them for their benefit through various influence operations.

 

Aigi Rahi-Tamm (b. 1965), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of History and Archaeology, Professor of Archival Studies (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), aigi.rahi-tamm@ut.ee

Keywords: family relationships, life narrative, life writing, personal experience stories, trauma

Recent public debates on family-related issues (What constitutes a traditional family? How widespread is domestic violence? What is the purpose of child protective services?) prompted an examination of these themes from the perspective of people’s personal experience. The article is based on manuscripts of life narratives obtained from the collection of Estonian Life Histories in the Estonian Cultural History Archives (EKM EKLA, f 350). The narratives were written down between 1989 and 2017 and provide a glimpse into the societal changes that took place between the 1930s and the early 21^st century. The favoured narrative techniques and the ways these changed at the end of the 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century also become apparent. The article compares Estonian narratives with Finnish ones. The comparison is aided by similar collection methods used both for Estonian and Finnish stories – these are thematic narratives archived by volunteer correspondents. More specifically, the focus is on generational conflicts present in life narratives.

Family relationships (including conflicts) are revealed in the narratives through the lens chosen by the narrator. It seems that family relationships were overshadowed by political issues in Estonian life stories narrated in the 1990s: the narrators concentrated on descriptions of people’s relationship with the Soviet power, including repressive experiences. In the early 2000s, this perspective receded, allowing more space for descriptions of relationships within the family. Depictions of post-war childhood sometimes suggest that children who grew up separately from their mother due to economic, social or other reasons never developed a close bond with her. In narratives collected in 2017, the narrator often looks at her life experience both as a daughter and a mother. In such cases, the focus of the narrative shifts from the relationship between herself and her mother to the development of the narrator as a person.

The comparison between Finnish and Estonian stories reveals that Finnish families tended to remain silent on difficult circumstances, whereas Estonian narratives emphasized the parents’ ability to explain difficult situations to children. Comparing the stories also pointed to a change in the family structure and functions in the 20^th century: the pre-war family model included the parents and the children, while in wartime and post-war families, the mother had to take on the father’s former responsibilities. In Finnish research, this is addressed through the lens of trauma studies (e.g., the aggressiveness of the exhausted single mother towards her children). In Estonia, the issue is seen through the framework of the impact of political repressions on a person’s life. However, the trauma discourse is also evident in Estonian narratives. That is, if the narrators themselves have used corporal punishment on their own children. In such cases, the focus is not so much on the events that took place as on a perception of changing values.

 

Tiiu Jaago (b. 1960), PhD, Associate Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tiiu.jaago@ut.ee

Keywords: life after death, categories of time, travels in the land of the dead, religious tales

The article presents a comparative historical analysis of fairy tales of the Friends in Life and Death (ATU/SUS 470) plot type, their features and distribution among Belarusians, Russians and Estonians. In the Estonian and Belarusian material, stories of this type are in some cases contaminated with the ATU 470A and 471A types.

We examine differences in the flow of time in the real world and other worlds, and consider the features of the chronotope of fairy tales and the organization of artistic space within them, as well as ways of transition and communication between the worlds.

According to the most common plot of ATU/SUS 470 fairy tales, two friends promise to be guests at each other’s weddings. One of them dies and the living friend invites the dead one to his wedding; however, after receiving a counter-invitation, he finds himself in another world. There he either travels with the deceased friend through his world, where he sees various curiosities and paradoxes, or celebrates at the wedding of the deceased friend. It seems to the living person that he spent several hours with the deceased friend (or with his brother or father in some Estonian versions), but when he returns to his own world, he discovers that decades or centuries have passed on Earth. Most often, after this discovery, the hero dies and turns to dust, but there are some rare Estonian versions where he miraculously restores ­himself and his bride to their original state (and age), after which they get married again.

 

Alena Boganeva (b. 1964), PhD, Yakub Kolas Institute of Linguistics of the Center for the Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Head of the Department of Ethnolinguistics (Surhanava 1, Corpus 2, 220072 Minsk, Belarus), elboganeva@gmail.com

Mare Kõiva (b. 1954), PhD, Estonian Literary Museum, Lead Research Fellow of the Department of Folkloristics, acting head of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian ­Studies (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), mare@folklore.ee

Keywords: rhetoric, „The Anxiety of Influence”, irony, metonymy, metaphor, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man

The inspiration for this article came from Jüri Talvet’s observation that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s „Faust” and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald’s „Kalevipoeg” show some remarkable similarities in their philosophical structure and plot. This article therefore aims to compare these two masterpieces by using Harold Bloom’s and Paul de Man’s understanding of tropes. While allusion and intertextuality studies typically focus on a limited number of similarities between two texts, Bloom’s anxiety of influence theory helps to apprehend both texts as a whole. This objective is achievable with two constraints. Firstly, making such a comparison requires us to widen our understanding of tropes. In this analysis, tropes do not signify limited transfers of meaning (from one word to another), but the full transformation of a text’s meaning. The background to this article lies in the hypothesis that large chunks of ­„Kalevipoeg” can be read as tropes that are derived from the verses of „Faust”. ­Secondly, this kind of analysis cannot focus on the style, genre or semantic nuances of both works, but only on the general picture: the stories and their protagonists. The anxiety of influence theory shows that the change of meaning from one work to another can be described by means of two kinds of tropes: limiting and repeating ones. In this article, the limiting tropes of irony, metonymy and metaphor can be used to depict the change of meaning from „Faust” to „Kalevipoeg”. The story of an intellectual who makes a pact with the devil, seeks absolute love and wishes to accomplish godly deeds becomes a story of a mythically strong hero who has no choice, never finds true love and achieves predestined greatness. According to Bloom, this is only half of the comparison. In a follow-up article, I will show how the repeating tropes of synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis can be used to demonstrate that the fate of these different protagonists is in fact somewhat similar.

 

Tõnis Parksepp (b. 1987), MA, freelance dramatist; University of Tartu, doctoral student at the Institute of Cultural Research (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tonisparksepp@gmail.com

Keywords: semantic types, polysemy, lexicography, lexicology, perception adjectives, corpus linguistics, Estonian

The article aims to identify the patterns of systematic polysemy for Estonian tactile adjectives using semantic types and corpus data. It also discusses the presentation of semantic patterns in a dictionary. This will help to provide a theoretical basis for lexicographers and to align the presentation of adjective polysemy in dictionaries. The dataset for the study consists of 265 tactile adjectives.

The corpus manager and text analysis software Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004, 2014) is used for corpus context analysis. The program allows to observe the collocations of a word based on various statistics, to generate word sketches, and to study words used in similar contexts by means of the thesaurus function. To find the patterns, semantic types are assigned to meanings and similarities are searched between meaning shifts. For tagging the adjective meanings, the semantic types developed to describe Estonian (polysemous) adjectives (Tuulik 2014; Tuulik, Langemets 2016) are used, and for noun meanings, the semantic types of the Estonian noun developed by Margit Langemets (2010) are used. The research method used for analyzing polysemy in the article is of a practical nature and has grown out of real-life lexicographical work.

A total of 13 polysemy patterns emerged in the tactile adjective group. The most common shift was from tactile characteristics to psychological characteristics (in the sense structure of 43 words). Shifts could be observed from pleasant tactile sensations to positive mental characteristics (e.g pehme padi ‘soft pillow’, pehme loomuga ‘soft-natured’) and from unpleasant touch experience to mentally unpleasant experience (okkaline roos ‘thorny rose’, okkaline iseloom ‘thorny character’). The study of systematic polysemy points to a strong link between the domains of tactile touch and feelings.

The lexicographic presentation of polysemous patterns varied. The pattern was represented as: 1) two distinct primary meanings; 2) primary meaning and submeaning(s); 3) a common aggregate meaning; 4) systematic polysemy that appeared in the corpus but was not presented. The analysis showed that lexicographers may perceive and present one and the same pattern in different ways; therefore, familiarity with polysemy patterns associated with the respective semantic type could contribute to a more systematic presentation.

 

Maria Tuulik (b. 1985), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer (Roosi­krantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), maria.tuulik@eki.ee

Keywords: usage-based linguistics, corpus linguistics, language planning, corpus planning, verb government, Estonian

For over a century, attempts have been made in Estonian language planning to standardize the oblique case selection of verbs (traditionally: verb government), but variation persists in actual language use. In this paper we look at the case selection patterns of a number of verbs, with which variation is said to occur without any semantic difference.

We look at the historical process of how corpus planning has decided on the “right” case-selection and compare it to actual language use from 1900–1939 and 2019–2021. Our analysis shows that variation is still present in the 2019–2021 data. A detailed multifactorial analysis of variation between comitative or allative marking of the oblique argument of the verb sarnanema ‘to resemble’ reveals that the most important factor affecting the choice between the two is in fact semantic, which has remained unnoticed by language planners for over a century. Language planners should therefore systematically take into account the results of linguistic research (based on actual language use), and linguists, in turn, should pay attention to variations in Standard Estonian in order to provide new input for language planners.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher, Language Planner (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Liina Lindström (b. 1973), PhD, University of Tartu, Professor of Modern Estonian Lan­guage (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), liina.lindstrom@ut.ee

Keywords: autobiographical writings, modernity, nature, vernacular literarcy

The article looks at nature references in texts written in the 1890s by two men born in the middle of the 19^th century: namely, the autobiographical writings of farmer and school teacher Paulus Paurmann (1850–1903), and the diary of miller Märt Siipsen (1846–1916). Paurmann and Siipsen can be called vernacular literati – despite their poor education they were eager to participate in the modern literary sphere as both readers and writers. Both men depended on nature in their livelihood – this combined with their interest in contemporary literary matters makes them good examples of the spread of modern ideas about nature among the lower social classes. 

The influence of these ideas can manifest in at least three different ways: (1) as an interest in modern scientific ideas; (2) as a wish to shape nature – plant new species, apply new technologies; (3) by using nature (as well as poetic language stemming from nature) to express one’s identity, to position oneself with respect to modern identity markers.

In Siipsen’s text we can see two different ways of positioning oneself in relation to nature: passive (religious) and active (practical). In some passages he states that everything which happens in nature depends on God, whereas in others he describes attempts at designing his surroundings by adding new plants and birds. The relationship between the two remains ambiguous. 

Paurmann has written two autobiographies. The earlier one uses a lot of descriptions of and metaphorical references to nature and its composition adheres to the poetics of sentimental chapbooks; the latter one is written in plain language and barely mentions nature at all. That is to say, references to nature in his writings depend on the chosen poetic language.

In conclusion, we can see that both men have incorporated into their writings certain new ideas about nature that were disseminated in the written discourse at the time. Siipsen mostly describes new ways of designing one’s farmyard, whereas Paurmann turns to poetic uses of nature.

 

Katre Kikas (b. 1981), MA, Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folklore Studies, Researcher (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), katre.kikas@folklore.ee

Keywords: 21st century literature, eco-fiction, citizen science, ornithology

The article compares birdwatchers’ experience of nature with the natural environment as conveyed in literary fiction. The source materials comprise, first of all, interviews conducted with (mostly amateur) Estonian birdwatchers and, secondly, contemporary Estonian and Swedish literary fiction: Maarja Pärtna’s prose poetry collection “The Living City” (Elav linn, 2022), Andrus Kivirähk’s book “Flight to the Moon” (Lend Kuule, 2022), Tõnis Tootsen’s novel “Pâté of the Apes: One Primate’s Thoughts and Memories” (Ahvide pasteet, 2022) and Kerstin Ekman’s novel “The Wolf Run” (Löpa varg, 2021; Estonian translation 2022). The focus is on whether and how the concerns of nature observers relate to anxiety about changes in the natural environment as expressed in contemporary literature. Amateur environmental ­science projects aim to draw attention to concerns about the natural environment and climate change and thereby strive for a smaller personal environmental impact. Eco-fiction, in turn, puts environmental issues into words, setting them into a fathomable, although perhaps altogether unexpected scale: hence, eco-prose and -poesy are essential ways of perceiving that also serve to interpret the ongoing changes.

Environment-oriented literary culture has responded to issues with the natural environment before. Now, too, it can be concluded that environmental concerns have made a forceful entry into literature. All of the above-mentioned authors have found their unique way of conceptualizing our home in an era of environmental crises. Their recently published works tell stories about our surroundings and interpret the present situation; they discuss the anthropocentric viewpoint or depict the human focus from an unexpected perspective; they draw attention to our alien­ation from nature; they reposition the reader and thereby seek solutions to environmental issues. Among other things, they highlight environmentally friendly ways of living and experiencing the world or look at the world through non-human eyes, thus bringing the narrator closer to other forms of being. The writers share with birdwatchers the post-humanist idea of the equality of species as well as a sharp eye for their subject.

 

Elle-Mari Talivee (b. 1974), PhD, Estonian Academy of Sciences, Under and Tuglas ­Literature Centre, Senior Researcher (Väikese Illimari 12, 11623 Tallinn); Tallinn University, Research Fellow, ellemari@utkk.ee

Keywords: Estonian literature, curricula, literary education, Soviet schools, ideology, identity

The article looks at changes in the literature curriculum throughout the Soviet occupation. It discusses the content of the curricula, the ideological context, as well as the proportion of the curriculum dedicated to literary education. Due to the sheer volume of the material available, the article limits itself to mapping out the topic: whether and how the ideological emphases evolved during different periods (Stalinism, the Khrushchev Thaw, the Era of Stagnation); the ratio of Russian (Soviet) to Estonian authors covered in the literary curriculum; the educational system paradoxes involved in literature as a school subject that allows for the expression of certain views.

Three observations are drawn in conclusion.

Firstly, in ideological and party-led education, literature lessons held a special place in Soviet schools. Literature – alongside history – was considered the most important subject for shaping the students’ views.

Secondly, a remarkable portion of the curriculum was allotted to literary education conceived in this manner, to make sure that the mandated authors could be discussed in depth. Without doubt, this involved communist instruction – the intensity of which varied greatly depending on the head of school, the teachers and the decade at hand. However, Estonian literature, especially the literary classics, could still be covered extensively alongside the ideological instruction.

Thirdly, literature lessons evolved into a sphere for the discussion of Estonian nationhood, owing to the fact that the accepted authors represented seminal texts, the examination of which made it possible to also talk about Estonian literary history. In the history of teaching and studying Estonian literature, the Soviet era was particularly notable for its emphasis on literary classics, which undeniably played a crucial role in the preservation of national identity.

The article also notes that Estonian literature largely lost this role in general education schools after Estonia regained its independence.

 

Maarja Vaino (b. 1976), PhD, literary scholar and Director of Tallinn Literary Centre ­(Koidula 12a, 10125 Tallinn), maarja.vaino@gmail.com

Keywords: 1960 Song Festival, exile, Eduard Tubin, cultural relations, splitted society, Soviet influence measures

Khrushchev’s policy of building cultural relations with the West opened up a possibility for communication between Estonians home and abroad in the late 1950s. From the Soviet perspective, this contact was aimed at weakening the anti-Soviet attitudes of refugee organizations and splitting the community that fled to the West. As a consequence of the non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, a portion of the community was determined not to visit their homeland until it was free. Another part, however, did not see much wrong with a trip to their native land. The disagreements and internal divisions of the community inspired the Soviet officials to influence the refugees in different ways. Making use of people’s homesickness and their wish to see friends and family, a number of people were selected for positive inclusion through cultural contact and other means in order to encourage other refugees to follow their example and change their behaviour and attitudes. The 1960 Song Festival seemed like a perfect opportunity to invite people to visit their homeland. The Festival was also meant to coax the acclaimed conductor and composer Eduard Tubin to visit Estonia.

However, the Song Festival failed to activate communication to the desired degree and Tubin also refused to participate. The manipulation of Tubin, which focused on his professional motivation and connections with former colleagues and acquain­tances, finally bore fruit in December 1961. The Ministry of State Security of the Estonian SSR considered this a breakthrough in changing the attitudes of the exiles, as the “emigrant leaders” reacted to Tubin’s visit with calls to refrain from visiting Estonia, which in turn sowed resentment among those who were looking forward to visiting their homeland and deepened internal contradictions. The debate that erupted around attending the Song Festival in Tallinn as well as Tubin’s trip to Estonia brought into view the fragmentation of the Estonian diaspora, the existential concerns of people living in exile that the Soviet authorities deliberately amplified in order to use them for their benefit through various influence operations.

 

Aigi Rahi-Tamm (b. 1965), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of History and Archaeology, Professor of Archival Studies (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), aigi.rahi-tamm@ut.ee

Keywords: family relationships, life narrative, life writing, personal experience stories, trauma

Recent public debates on family-related issues (What constitutes a traditional family? How widespread is domestic violence? What is the purpose of child protective services?) prompted an examination of these themes from the perspective of people’s personal experience. The article is based on manuscripts of life narratives obtained from the collection of Estonian Life Histories in the Estonian Cultural History Archives (EKM EKLA, f 350). The narratives were written down between 1989 and 2017 and provide a glimpse into the societal changes that took place between the 1930s and the early 21^st century. The favoured narrative techniques and the ways these changed at the end of the 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century also become apparent. The article compares Estonian narratives with Finnish ones. The comparison is aided by similar collection methods used both for Estonian and Finnish stories – these are thematic narratives archived by volunteer correspondents. More specifically, the focus is on generational conflicts present in life narratives.

Family relationships (including conflicts) are revealed in the narratives through the lens chosen by the narrator. It seems that family relationships were overshadowed by political issues in Estonian life stories narrated in the 1990s: the narrators concentrated on descriptions of people’s relationship with the Soviet power, including repressive experiences. In the early 2000s, this perspective receded, allowing more space for descriptions of relationships within the family. Depictions of post-war childhood sometimes suggest that children who grew up separately from their mother due to economic, social or other reasons never developed a close bond with her. In narratives collected in 2017, the narrator often looks at her life experience both as a daughter and a mother. In such cases, the focus of the narrative shifts from the relationship between herself and her mother to the development of the narrator as a person.

The comparison between Finnish and Estonian stories reveals that Finnish families tended to remain silent on difficult circumstances, whereas Estonian narratives emphasized the parents’ ability to explain difficult situations to children. Comparing the stories also pointed to a change in the family structure and functions in the 20^th century: the pre-war family model included the parents and the children, while in wartime and post-war families, the mother had to take on the father’s former responsibilities. In Finnish research, this is addressed through the lens of trauma studies (e.g., the aggressiveness of the exhausted single mother towards her children). In Estonia, the issue is seen through the framework of the impact of political repressions on a person’s life. However, the trauma discourse is also evident in Estonian narratives. That is, if the narrators themselves have used corporal punishment on their own children. In such cases, the focus is not so much on the events that took place as on a perception of changing values.

 

Tiiu Jaago (b. 1960), PhD, Associate Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tiiu.jaago@ut.ee

Keywords: life after death, categories of time, travels in the land of the dead, religious tales

The article presents a comparative historical analysis of fairy tales of the Friends in Life and Death (ATU/SUS 470) plot type, their features and distribution among Belarusians, Russians and Estonians. In the Estonian and Belarusian material, stories of this type are in some cases contaminated with the ATU 470A and 471A types.

We examine differences in the flow of time in the real world and other worlds, and consider the features of the chronotope of fairy tales and the organization of artistic space within them, as well as ways of transition and communication between the worlds.

According to the most common plot of ATU/SUS 470 fairy tales, two friends promise to be guests at each other’s weddings. One of them dies and the living friend invites the dead one to his wedding; however, after receiving a counter-invitation, he finds himself in another world. There he either travels with the deceased friend through his world, where he sees various curiosities and paradoxes, or celebrates at the wedding of the deceased friend. It seems to the living person that he spent several hours with the deceased friend (or with his brother or father in some Estonian versions), but when he returns to his own world, he discovers that decades or centuries have passed on Earth. Most often, after this discovery, the hero dies and turns to dust, but there are some rare Estonian versions where he miraculously restores ­himself and his bride to their original state (and age), after which they get married again.

 

Alena Boganeva (b. 1964), PhD, Yakub Kolas Institute of Linguistics of the Center for the Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Head of the Department of Ethnolinguistics (Surhanava 1, Corpus 2, 220072 Minsk, Belarus), elboganeva@gmail.com

Mare Kõiva (b. 1954), PhD, Estonian Literary Museum, Lead Research Fellow of the Department of Folkloristics, acting head of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian ­Studies (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), mare@folklore.ee

Keywords: rhetoric, „The Anxiety of Influence”, irony, metonymy, metaphor, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man

The inspiration for this article came from Jüri Talvet’s observation that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s „Faust” and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald’s „Kalevipoeg” show some remarkable similarities in their philosophical structure and plot. This article therefore aims to compare these two masterpieces by using Harold Bloom’s and Paul de Man’s understanding of tropes. While allusion and intertextuality studies typically focus on a limited number of similarities between two texts, Bloom’s anxiety of influence theory helps to apprehend both texts as a whole. This objective is achievable with two constraints. Firstly, making such a comparison requires us to widen our understanding of tropes. In this analysis, tropes do not signify limited transfers of meaning (from one word to another), but the full transformation of a text’s meaning. The background to this article lies in the hypothesis that large chunks of ­„Kalevipoeg” can be read as tropes that are derived from the verses of „Faust”. ­Secondly, this kind of analysis cannot focus on the style, genre or semantic nuances of both works, but only on the general picture: the stories and their protagonists. The anxiety of influence theory shows that the change of meaning from one work to another can be described by means of two kinds of tropes: limiting and repeating ones. In this article, the limiting tropes of irony, metonymy and metaphor can be used to depict the change of meaning from „Faust” to „Kalevipoeg”. The story of an intellectual who makes a pact with the devil, seeks absolute love and wishes to accomplish godly deeds becomes a story of a mythically strong hero who has no choice, never finds true love and achieves predestined greatness. According to Bloom, this is only half of the comparison. In a follow-up article, I will show how the repeating tropes of synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis can be used to demonstrate that the fate of these different protagonists is in fact somewhat similar.

 

Tõnis Parksepp (b. 1987), MA, freelance dramatist; University of Tartu, doctoral student at the Institute of Cultural Research (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tonisparksepp@gmail.com

Keywords: semantic types, polysemy, lexicography, lexicology, perception adjectives, corpus linguistics, Estonian

The article aims to identify the patterns of systematic polysemy for Estonian tactile adjectives using semantic types and corpus data. It also discusses the presentation of semantic patterns in a dictionary. This will help to provide a theoretical basis for lexicographers and to align the presentation of adjective polysemy in dictionaries. The dataset for the study consists of 265 tactile adjectives.

The corpus manager and text analysis software Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004, 2014) is used for corpus context analysis. The program allows to observe the collocations of a word based on various statistics, to generate word sketches, and to study words used in similar contexts by means of the thesaurus function. To find the patterns, semantic types are assigned to meanings and similarities are searched between meaning shifts. For tagging the adjective meanings, the semantic types developed to describe Estonian (polysemous) adjectives (Tuulik 2014; Tuulik, Langemets 2016) are used, and for noun meanings, the semantic types of the Estonian noun developed by Margit Langemets (2010) are used. The research method used for analyzing polysemy in the article is of a practical nature and has grown out of real-life lexicographical work.

A total of 13 polysemy patterns emerged in the tactile adjective group. The most common shift was from tactile characteristics to psychological characteristics (in the sense structure of 43 words). Shifts could be observed from pleasant tactile sensations to positive mental characteristics (e.g pehme padi ‘soft pillow’, pehme loomuga ‘soft-natured’) and from unpleasant touch experience to mentally unpleasant experience (okkaline roos ‘thorny rose’, okkaline iseloom ‘thorny character’). The study of systematic polysemy points to a strong link between the domains of tactile touch and feelings.

The lexicographic presentation of polysemous patterns varied. The pattern was represented as: 1) two distinct primary meanings; 2) primary meaning and submeaning(s); 3) a common aggregate meaning; 4) systematic polysemy that appeared in the corpus but was not presented. The analysis showed that lexicographers may perceive and present one and the same pattern in different ways; therefore, familiarity with polysemy patterns associated with the respective semantic type could contribute to a more systematic presentation.

 

Maria Tuulik (b. 1985), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer (Roosi­krantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), maria.tuulik@eki.ee

Keywords: usage-based linguistics, corpus linguistics, language planning, corpus planning, verb government, Estonian

For over a century, attempts have been made in Estonian language planning to standardize the oblique case selection of verbs (traditionally: verb government), but variation persists in actual language use. In this paper we look at the case selection patterns of a number of verbs, with which variation is said to occur without any semantic difference.

We look at the historical process of how corpus planning has decided on the “right” case-selection and compare it to actual language use from 1900–1939 and 2019–2021. Our analysis shows that variation is still present in the 2019–2021 data. A detailed multifactorial analysis of variation between comitative or allative marking of the oblique argument of the verb sarnanema ‘to resemble’ reveals that the most important factor affecting the choice between the two is in fact semantic, which has remained unnoticed by language planners for over a century. Language planners should therefore systematically take into account the results of linguistic research (based on actual language use), and linguists, in turn, should pay attention to variations in Standard Estonian in order to provide new input for language planners.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher, Language Planner (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Liina Lindström (b. 1973), PhD, University of Tartu, Professor of Modern Estonian Lan­guage (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), liina.lindstrom@ut.ee

Keywords: autobiographical writings, modernity, nature, vernacular literarcy

The article looks at nature references in texts written in the 1890s by two men born in the middle of the 19^th century: namely, the autobiographical writings of farmer and school teacher Paulus Paurmann (1850–1903), and the diary of miller Märt Siipsen (1846–1916). Paurmann and Siipsen can be called vernacular literati – despite their poor education they were eager to participate in the modern literary sphere as both readers and writers. Both men depended on nature in their livelihood – this combined with their interest in contemporary literary matters makes them good examples of the spread of modern ideas about nature among the lower social classes. 

The influence of these ideas can manifest in at least three different ways: (1) as an interest in modern scientific ideas; (2) as a wish to shape nature – plant new species, apply new technologies; (3) by using nature (as well as poetic language stemming from nature) to express one’s identity, to position oneself with respect to modern identity markers.

In Siipsen’s text we can see two different ways of positioning oneself in relation to nature: passive (religious) and active (practical). In some passages he states that everything which happens in nature depends on God, whereas in others he describes attempts at designing his surroundings by adding new plants and birds. The relationship between the two remains ambiguous. 

Paurmann has written two autobiographies. The earlier one uses a lot of descriptions of and metaphorical references to nature and its composition adheres to the poetics of sentimental chapbooks; the latter one is written in plain language and barely mentions nature at all. That is to say, references to nature in his writings depend on the chosen poetic language.

In conclusion, we can see that both men have incorporated into their writings certain new ideas about nature that were disseminated in the written discourse at the time. Siipsen mostly describes new ways of designing one’s farmyard, whereas Paurmann turns to poetic uses of nature.

 

Katre Kikas (b. 1981), MA, Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folklore Studies, Researcher (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), katre.kikas@folklore.ee

Keywords: 21st century literature, eco-fiction, citizen science, ornithology

The article compares birdwatchers’ experience of nature with the natural environment as conveyed in literary fiction. The source materials comprise, first of all, interviews conducted with (mostly amateur) Estonian birdwatchers and, secondly, contemporary Estonian and Swedish literary fiction: Maarja Pärtna’s prose poetry collection “The Living City” (Elav linn, 2022), Andrus Kivirähk’s book “Flight to the Moon” (Lend Kuule, 2022), Tõnis Tootsen’s novel “Pâté of the Apes: One Primate’s Thoughts and Memories” (Ahvide pasteet, 2022) and Kerstin Ekman’s novel “The Wolf Run” (Löpa varg, 2021; Estonian translation 2022). The focus is on whether and how the concerns of nature observers relate to anxiety about changes in the natural environment as expressed in contemporary literature. Amateur environmental ­science projects aim to draw attention to concerns about the natural environment and climate change and thereby strive for a smaller personal environmental impact. Eco-fiction, in turn, puts environmental issues into words, setting them into a fathomable, although perhaps altogether unexpected scale: hence, eco-prose and -poesy are essential ways of perceiving that also serve to interpret the ongoing changes.

Environment-oriented literary culture has responded to issues with the natural environment before. Now, too, it can be concluded that environmental concerns have made a forceful entry into literature. All of the above-mentioned authors have found their unique way of conceptualizing our home in an era of environmental crises. Their recently published works tell stories about our surroundings and interpret the present situation; they discuss the anthropocentric viewpoint or depict the human focus from an unexpected perspective; they draw attention to our alien­ation from nature; they reposition the reader and thereby seek solutions to environmental issues. Among other things, they highlight environmentally friendly ways of living and experiencing the world or look at the world through non-human eyes, thus bringing the narrator closer to other forms of being. The writers share with birdwatchers the post-humanist idea of the equality of species as well as a sharp eye for their subject.

 

Elle-Mari Talivee (b. 1974), PhD, Estonian Academy of Sciences, Under and Tuglas ­Literature Centre, Senior Researcher (Väikese Illimari 12, 11623 Tallinn); Tallinn University, Research Fellow, ellemari@utkk.ee

Keywords: Estonian literature, curricula, literary education, Soviet schools, ideology, identity

The article looks at changes in the literature curriculum throughout the Soviet occupation. It discusses the content of the curricula, the ideological context, as well as the proportion of the curriculum dedicated to literary education. Due to the sheer volume of the material available, the article limits itself to mapping out the topic: whether and how the ideological emphases evolved during different periods (Stalinism, the Khrushchev Thaw, the Era of Stagnation); the ratio of Russian (Soviet) to Estonian authors covered in the literary curriculum; the educational system paradoxes involved in literature as a school subject that allows for the expression of certain views.

Three observations are drawn in conclusion.

Firstly, in ideological and party-led education, literature lessons held a special place in Soviet schools. Literature – alongside history – was considered the most important subject for shaping the students’ views.

Secondly, a remarkable portion of the curriculum was allotted to literary education conceived in this manner, to make sure that the mandated authors could be discussed in depth. Without doubt, this involved communist instruction – the intensity of which varied greatly depending on the head of school, the teachers and the decade at hand. However, Estonian literature, especially the literary classics, could still be covered extensively alongside the ideological instruction.

Thirdly, literature lessons evolved into a sphere for the discussion of Estonian nationhood, owing to the fact that the accepted authors represented seminal texts, the examination of which made it possible to also talk about Estonian literary history. In the history of teaching and studying Estonian literature, the Soviet era was particularly notable for its emphasis on literary classics, which undeniably played a crucial role in the preservation of national identity.

The article also notes that Estonian literature largely lost this role in general education schools after Estonia regained its independence.

 

Maarja Vaino (b. 1976), PhD, literary scholar and Director of Tallinn Literary Centre ­(Koidula 12a, 10125 Tallinn), maarja.vaino@gmail.com

Keywords: 1960 Song Festival, exile, Eduard Tubin, cultural relations, splitted society, Soviet influence measures

Khrushchev’s policy of building cultural relations with the West opened up a possibility for communication between Estonians home and abroad in the late 1950s. From the Soviet perspective, this contact was aimed at weakening the anti-Soviet attitudes of refugee organizations and splitting the community that fled to the West. As a consequence of the non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, a portion of the community was determined not to visit their homeland until it was free. Another part, however, did not see much wrong with a trip to their native land. The disagreements and internal divisions of the community inspired the Soviet officials to influence the refugees in different ways. Making use of people’s homesickness and their wish to see friends and family, a number of people were selected for positive inclusion through cultural contact and other means in order to encourage other refugees to follow their example and change their behaviour and attitudes. The 1960 Song Festival seemed like a perfect opportunity to invite people to visit their homeland. The Festival was also meant to coax the acclaimed conductor and composer Eduard Tubin to visit Estonia.

However, the Song Festival failed to activate communication to the desired degree and Tubin also refused to participate. The manipulation of Tubin, which focused on his professional motivation and connections with former colleagues and acquain­tances, finally bore fruit in December 1961. The Ministry of State Security of the Estonian SSR considered this a breakthrough in changing the attitudes of the exiles, as the “emigrant leaders” reacted to Tubin’s visit with calls to refrain from visiting Estonia, which in turn sowed resentment among those who were looking forward to visiting their homeland and deepened internal contradictions. The debate that erupted around attending the Song Festival in Tallinn as well as Tubin’s trip to Estonia brought into view the fragmentation of the Estonian diaspora, the existential concerns of people living in exile that the Soviet authorities deliberately amplified in order to use them for their benefit through various influence operations.

 

Aigi Rahi-Tamm (b. 1965), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of History and Archaeology, Professor of Archival Studies (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), aigi.rahi-tamm@ut.ee

Keywords: family relationships, life narrative, life writing, personal experience stories, trauma

Recent public debates on family-related issues (What constitutes a traditional family? How widespread is domestic violence? What is the purpose of child protective services?) prompted an examination of these themes from the perspective of people’s personal experience. The article is based on manuscripts of life narratives obtained from the collection of Estonian Life Histories in the Estonian Cultural History Archives (EKM EKLA, f 350). The narratives were written down between 1989 and 2017 and provide a glimpse into the societal changes that took place between the 1930s and the early 21^st century. The favoured narrative techniques and the ways these changed at the end of the 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century also become apparent. The article compares Estonian narratives with Finnish ones. The comparison is aided by similar collection methods used both for Estonian and Finnish stories – these are thematic narratives archived by volunteer correspondents. More specifically, the focus is on generational conflicts present in life narratives.

Family relationships (including conflicts) are revealed in the narratives through the lens chosen by the narrator. It seems that family relationships were overshadowed by political issues in Estonian life stories narrated in the 1990s: the narrators concentrated on descriptions of people’s relationship with the Soviet power, including repressive experiences. In the early 2000s, this perspective receded, allowing more space for descriptions of relationships within the family. Depictions of post-war childhood sometimes suggest that children who grew up separately from their mother due to economic, social or other reasons never developed a close bond with her. In narratives collected in 2017, the narrator often looks at her life experience both as a daughter and a mother. In such cases, the focus of the narrative shifts from the relationship between herself and her mother to the development of the narrator as a person.

The comparison between Finnish and Estonian stories reveals that Finnish families tended to remain silent on difficult circumstances, whereas Estonian narratives emphasized the parents’ ability to explain difficult situations to children. Comparing the stories also pointed to a change in the family structure and functions in the 20^th century: the pre-war family model included the parents and the children, while in wartime and post-war families, the mother had to take on the father’s former responsibilities. In Finnish research, this is addressed through the lens of trauma studies (e.g., the aggressiveness of the exhausted single mother towards her children). In Estonia, the issue is seen through the framework of the impact of political repressions on a person’s life. However, the trauma discourse is also evident in Estonian narratives. That is, if the narrators themselves have used corporal punishment on their own children. In such cases, the focus is not so much on the events that took place as on a perception of changing values.

 

Tiiu Jaago (b. 1960), PhD, Associate Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tiiu.jaago@ut.ee

Keywords: life after death, categories of time, travels in the land of the dead, religious tales

The article presents a comparative historical analysis of fairy tales of the Friends in Life and Death (ATU/SUS 470) plot type, their features and distribution among Belarusians, Russians and Estonians. In the Estonian and Belarusian material, stories of this type are in some cases contaminated with the ATU 470A and 471A types.

We examine differences in the flow of time in the real world and other worlds, and consider the features of the chronotope of fairy tales and the organization of artistic space within them, as well as ways of transition and communication between the worlds.

According to the most common plot of ATU/SUS 470 fairy tales, two friends promise to be guests at each other’s weddings. One of them dies and the living friend invites the dead one to his wedding; however, after receiving a counter-invitation, he finds himself in another world. There he either travels with the deceased friend through his world, where he sees various curiosities and paradoxes, or celebrates at the wedding of the deceased friend. It seems to the living person that he spent several hours with the deceased friend (or with his brother or father in some Estonian versions), but when he returns to his own world, he discovers that decades or centuries have passed on Earth. Most often, after this discovery, the hero dies and turns to dust, but there are some rare Estonian versions where he miraculously restores ­himself and his bride to their original state (and age), after which they get married again.

 

Alena Boganeva (b. 1964), PhD, Yakub Kolas Institute of Linguistics of the Center for the Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Head of the Department of Ethnolinguistics (Surhanava 1, Corpus 2, 220072 Minsk, Belarus), elboganeva@gmail.com

Mare Kõiva (b. 1954), PhD, Estonian Literary Museum, Lead Research Fellow of the Department of Folkloristics, acting head of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian ­Studies (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), mare@folklore.ee

Keywords: rhetoric, „The Anxiety of Influence”, irony, metonymy, metaphor, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man

The inspiration for this article came from Jüri Talvet’s observation that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s „Faust” and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald’s „Kalevipoeg” show some remarkable similarities in their philosophical structure and plot. This article therefore aims to compare these two masterpieces by using Harold Bloom’s and Paul de Man’s understanding of tropes. While allusion and intertextuality studies typically focus on a limited number of similarities between two texts, Bloom’s anxiety of influence theory helps to apprehend both texts as a whole. This objective is achievable with two constraints. Firstly, making such a comparison requires us to widen our understanding of tropes. In this analysis, tropes do not signify limited transfers of meaning (from one word to another), but the full transformation of a text’s meaning. The background to this article lies in the hypothesis that large chunks of ­„Kalevipoeg” can be read as tropes that are derived from the verses of „Faust”. ­Secondly, this kind of analysis cannot focus on the style, genre or semantic nuances of both works, but only on the general picture: the stories and their protagonists. The anxiety of influence theory shows that the change of meaning from one work to another can be described by means of two kinds of tropes: limiting and repeating ones. In this article, the limiting tropes of irony, metonymy and metaphor can be used to depict the change of meaning from „Faust” to „Kalevipoeg”. The story of an intellectual who makes a pact with the devil, seeks absolute love and wishes to accomplish godly deeds becomes a story of a mythically strong hero who has no choice, never finds true love and achieves predestined greatness. According to Bloom, this is only half of the comparison. In a follow-up article, I will show how the repeating tropes of synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis can be used to demonstrate that the fate of these different protagonists is in fact somewhat similar.

 

Tõnis Parksepp (b. 1987), MA, freelance dramatist; University of Tartu, doctoral student at the Institute of Cultural Research (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tonisparksepp@gmail.com

Keywords: semantic types, polysemy, lexicography, lexicology, perception adjectives, corpus linguistics, Estonian

The article aims to identify the patterns of systematic polysemy for Estonian tactile adjectives using semantic types and corpus data. It also discusses the presentation of semantic patterns in a dictionary. This will help to provide a theoretical basis for lexicographers and to align the presentation of adjective polysemy in dictionaries. The dataset for the study consists of 265 tactile adjectives.

The corpus manager and text analysis software Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004, 2014) is used for corpus context analysis. The program allows to observe the collocations of a word based on various statistics, to generate word sketches, and to study words used in similar contexts by means of the thesaurus function. To find the patterns, semantic types are assigned to meanings and similarities are searched between meaning shifts. For tagging the adjective meanings, the semantic types developed to describe Estonian (polysemous) adjectives (Tuulik 2014; Tuulik, Langemets 2016) are used, and for noun meanings, the semantic types of the Estonian noun developed by Margit Langemets (2010) are used. The research method used for analyzing polysemy in the article is of a practical nature and has grown out of real-life lexicographical work.

A total of 13 polysemy patterns emerged in the tactile adjective group. The most common shift was from tactile characteristics to psychological characteristics (in the sense structure of 43 words). Shifts could be observed from pleasant tactile sensations to positive mental characteristics (e.g pehme padi ‘soft pillow’, pehme loomuga ‘soft-natured’) and from unpleasant touch experience to mentally unpleasant experience (okkaline roos ‘thorny rose’, okkaline iseloom ‘thorny character’). The study of systematic polysemy points to a strong link between the domains of tactile touch and feelings.

The lexicographic presentation of polysemous patterns varied. The pattern was represented as: 1) two distinct primary meanings; 2) primary meaning and submeaning(s); 3) a common aggregate meaning; 4) systematic polysemy that appeared in the corpus but was not presented. The analysis showed that lexicographers may perceive and present one and the same pattern in different ways; therefore, familiarity with polysemy patterns associated with the respective semantic type could contribute to a more systematic presentation.

 

Maria Tuulik (b. 1985), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer (Roosi­krantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), maria.tuulik@eki.ee

Keywords: usage-based linguistics, corpus linguistics, language planning, corpus planning, verb government, Estonian

For over a century, attempts have been made in Estonian language planning to standardize the oblique case selection of verbs (traditionally: verb government), but variation persists in actual language use. In this paper we look at the case selection patterns of a number of verbs, with which variation is said to occur without any semantic difference.

We look at the historical process of how corpus planning has decided on the “right” case-selection and compare it to actual language use from 1900–1939 and 2019–2021. Our analysis shows that variation is still present in the 2019–2021 data. A detailed multifactorial analysis of variation between comitative or allative marking of the oblique argument of the verb sarnanema ‘to resemble’ reveals that the most important factor affecting the choice between the two is in fact semantic, which has remained unnoticed by language planners for over a century. Language planners should therefore systematically take into account the results of linguistic research (based on actual language use), and linguists, in turn, should pay attention to variations in Standard Estonian in order to provide new input for language planners.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher, Language Planner (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Liina Lindström (b. 1973), PhD, University of Tartu, Professor of Modern Estonian Lan­guage (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), liina.lindstrom@ut.ee

Keywords: autobiographical writings, modernity, nature, vernacular literarcy

The article looks at nature references in texts written in the 1890s by two men born in the middle of the 19^th century: namely, the autobiographical writings of farmer and school teacher Paulus Paurmann (1850–1903), and the diary of miller Märt Siipsen (1846–1916). Paurmann and Siipsen can be called vernacular literati – despite their poor education they were eager to participate in the modern literary sphere as both readers and writers. Both men depended on nature in their livelihood – this combined with their interest in contemporary literary matters makes them good examples of the spread of modern ideas about nature among the lower social classes. 

The influence of these ideas can manifest in at least three different ways: (1) as an interest in modern scientific ideas; (2) as a wish to shape nature – plant new species, apply new technologies; (3) by using nature (as well as poetic language stemming from nature) to express one’s identity, to position oneself with respect to modern identity markers.

In Siipsen’s text we can see two different ways of positioning oneself in relation to nature: passive (religious) and active (practical). In some passages he states that everything which happens in nature depends on God, whereas in others he describes attempts at designing his surroundings by adding new plants and birds. The relationship between the two remains ambiguous. 

Paurmann has written two autobiographies. The earlier one uses a lot of descriptions of and metaphorical references to nature and its composition adheres to the poetics of sentimental chapbooks; the latter one is written in plain language and barely mentions nature at all. That is to say, references to nature in his writings depend on the chosen poetic language.

In conclusion, we can see that both men have incorporated into their writings certain new ideas about nature that were disseminated in the written discourse at the time. Siipsen mostly describes new ways of designing one’s farmyard, whereas Paurmann turns to poetic uses of nature.

 

Katre Kikas (b. 1981), MA, Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folklore Studies, Researcher (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), katre.kikas@folklore.ee

Keywords: 21st century literature, eco-fiction, citizen science, ornithology

The article compares birdwatchers’ experience of nature with the natural environment as conveyed in literary fiction. The source materials comprise, first of all, interviews conducted with (mostly amateur) Estonian birdwatchers and, secondly, contemporary Estonian and Swedish literary fiction: Maarja Pärtna’s prose poetry collection “The Living City” (Elav linn, 2022), Andrus Kivirähk’s book “Flight to the Moon” (Lend Kuule, 2022), Tõnis Tootsen’s novel “Pâté of the Apes: One Primate’s Thoughts and Memories” (Ahvide pasteet, 2022) and Kerstin Ekman’s novel “The Wolf Run” (Löpa varg, 2021; Estonian translation 2022). The focus is on whether and how the concerns of nature observers relate to anxiety about changes in the natural environment as expressed in contemporary literature. Amateur environmental ­science projects aim to draw attention to concerns about the natural environment and climate change and thereby strive for a smaller personal environmental impact. Eco-fiction, in turn, puts environmental issues into words, setting them into a fathomable, although perhaps altogether unexpected scale: hence, eco-prose and -poesy are essential ways of perceiving that also serve to interpret the ongoing changes.

Environment-oriented literary culture has responded to issues with the natural environment before. Now, too, it can be concluded that environmental concerns have made a forceful entry into literature. All of the above-mentioned authors have found their unique way of conceptualizing our home in an era of environmental crises. Their recently published works tell stories about our surroundings and interpret the present situation; they discuss the anthropocentric viewpoint or depict the human focus from an unexpected perspective; they draw attention to our alien­ation from nature; they reposition the reader and thereby seek solutions to environmental issues. Among other things, they highlight environmentally friendly ways of living and experiencing the world or look at the world through non-human eyes, thus bringing the narrator closer to other forms of being. The writers share with birdwatchers the post-humanist idea of the equality of species as well as a sharp eye for their subject.

 

Elle-Mari Talivee (b. 1974), PhD, Estonian Academy of Sciences, Under and Tuglas ­Literature Centre, Senior Researcher (Väikese Illimari 12, 11623 Tallinn); Tallinn University, Research Fellow, ellemari@utkk.ee

Keywords: Estonian literature, curricula, literary education, Soviet schools, ideology, identity

The article looks at changes in the literature curriculum throughout the Soviet occupation. It discusses the content of the curricula, the ideological context, as well as the proportion of the curriculum dedicated to literary education. Due to the sheer volume of the material available, the article limits itself to mapping out the topic: whether and how the ideological emphases evolved during different periods (Stalinism, the Khrushchev Thaw, the Era of Stagnation); the ratio of Russian (Soviet) to Estonian authors covered in the literary curriculum; the educational system paradoxes involved in literature as a school subject that allows for the expression of certain views.

Three observations are drawn in conclusion.

Firstly, in ideological and party-led education, literature lessons held a special place in Soviet schools. Literature – alongside history – was considered the most important subject for shaping the students’ views.

Secondly, a remarkable portion of the curriculum was allotted to literary education conceived in this manner, to make sure that the mandated authors could be discussed in depth. Without doubt, this involved communist instruction – the intensity of which varied greatly depending on the head of school, the teachers and the decade at hand. However, Estonian literature, especially the literary classics, could still be covered extensively alongside the ideological instruction.

Thirdly, literature lessons evolved into a sphere for the discussion of Estonian nationhood, owing to the fact that the accepted authors represented seminal texts, the examination of which made it possible to also talk about Estonian literary history. In the history of teaching and studying Estonian literature, the Soviet era was particularly notable for its emphasis on literary classics, which undeniably played a crucial role in the preservation of national identity.

The article also notes that Estonian literature largely lost this role in general education schools after Estonia regained its independence.

 

Maarja Vaino (b. 1976), PhD, literary scholar and Director of Tallinn Literary Centre ­(Koidula 12a, 10125 Tallinn), maarja.vaino@gmail.com

Keywords: 1960 Song Festival, exile, Eduard Tubin, cultural relations, splitted society, Soviet influence measures

Khrushchev’s policy of building cultural relations with the West opened up a possibility for communication between Estonians home and abroad in the late 1950s. From the Soviet perspective, this contact was aimed at weakening the anti-Soviet attitudes of refugee organizations and splitting the community that fled to the West. As a consequence of the non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, a portion of the community was determined not to visit their homeland until it was free. Another part, however, did not see much wrong with a trip to their native land. The disagreements and internal divisions of the community inspired the Soviet officials to influence the refugees in different ways. Making use of people’s homesickness and their wish to see friends and family, a number of people were selected for positive inclusion through cultural contact and other means in order to encourage other refugees to follow their example and change their behaviour and attitudes. The 1960 Song Festival seemed like a perfect opportunity to invite people to visit their homeland. The Festival was also meant to coax the acclaimed conductor and composer Eduard Tubin to visit Estonia.

However, the Song Festival failed to activate communication to the desired degree and Tubin also refused to participate. The manipulation of Tubin, which focused on his professional motivation and connections with former colleagues and acquain­tances, finally bore fruit in December 1961. The Ministry of State Security of the Estonian SSR considered this a breakthrough in changing the attitudes of the exiles, as the “emigrant leaders” reacted to Tubin’s visit with calls to refrain from visiting Estonia, which in turn sowed resentment among those who were looking forward to visiting their homeland and deepened internal contradictions. The debate that erupted around attending the Song Festival in Tallinn as well as Tubin’s trip to Estonia brought into view the fragmentation of the Estonian diaspora, the existential concerns of people living in exile that the Soviet authorities deliberately amplified in order to use them for their benefit through various influence operations.

 

Aigi Rahi-Tamm (b. 1965), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of History and Archaeology, Professor of Archival Studies (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), aigi.rahi-tamm@ut.ee

Keywords: family relationships, life narrative, life writing, personal experience stories, trauma

Recent public debates on family-related issues (What constitutes a traditional family? How widespread is domestic violence? What is the purpose of child protective services?) prompted an examination of these themes from the perspective of people’s personal experience. The article is based on manuscripts of life narratives obtained from the collection of Estonian Life Histories in the Estonian Cultural History Archives (EKM EKLA, f 350). The narratives were written down between 1989 and 2017 and provide a glimpse into the societal changes that took place between the 1930s and the early 21^st century. The favoured narrative techniques and the ways these changed at the end of the 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century also become apparent. The article compares Estonian narratives with Finnish ones. The comparison is aided by similar collection methods used both for Estonian and Finnish stories – these are thematic narratives archived by volunteer correspondents. More specifically, the focus is on generational conflicts present in life narratives.

Family relationships (including conflicts) are revealed in the narratives through the lens chosen by the narrator. It seems that family relationships were overshadowed by political issues in Estonian life stories narrated in the 1990s: the narrators concentrated on descriptions of people’s relationship with the Soviet power, including repressive experiences. In the early 2000s, this perspective receded, allowing more space for descriptions of relationships within the family. Depictions of post-war childhood sometimes suggest that children who grew up separately from their mother due to economic, social or other reasons never developed a close bond with her. In narratives collected in 2017, the narrator often looks at her life experience both as a daughter and a mother. In such cases, the focus of the narrative shifts from the relationship between herself and her mother to the development of the narrator as a person.

The comparison between Finnish and Estonian stories reveals that Finnish families tended to remain silent on difficult circumstances, whereas Estonian narratives emphasized the parents’ ability to explain difficult situations to children. Comparing the stories also pointed to a change in the family structure and functions in the 20^th century: the pre-war family model included the parents and the children, while in wartime and post-war families, the mother had to take on the father’s former responsibilities. In Finnish research, this is addressed through the lens of trauma studies (e.g., the aggressiveness of the exhausted single mother towards her children). In Estonia, the issue is seen through the framework of the impact of political repressions on a person’s life. However, the trauma discourse is also evident in Estonian narratives. That is, if the narrators themselves have used corporal punishment on their own children. In such cases, the focus is not so much on the events that took place as on a perception of changing values.

 

Tiiu Jaago (b. 1960), PhD, Associate Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tiiu.jaago@ut.ee

Keywords: life after death, categories of time, travels in the land of the dead, religious tales

The article presents a comparative historical analysis of fairy tales of the Friends in Life and Death (ATU/SUS 470) plot type, their features and distribution among Belarusians, Russians and Estonians. In the Estonian and Belarusian material, stories of this type are in some cases contaminated with the ATU 470A and 471A types.

We examine differences in the flow of time in the real world and other worlds, and consider the features of the chronotope of fairy tales and the organization of artistic space within them, as well as ways of transition and communication between the worlds.

According to the most common plot of ATU/SUS 470 fairy tales, two friends promise to be guests at each other’s weddings. One of them dies and the living friend invites the dead one to his wedding; however, after receiving a counter-invitation, he finds himself in another world. There he either travels with the deceased friend through his world, where he sees various curiosities and paradoxes, or celebrates at the wedding of the deceased friend. It seems to the living person that he spent several hours with the deceased friend (or with his brother or father in some Estonian versions), but when he returns to his own world, he discovers that decades or centuries have passed on Earth. Most often, after this discovery, the hero dies and turns to dust, but there are some rare Estonian versions where he miraculously restores ­himself and his bride to their original state (and age), after which they get married again.

 

Alena Boganeva (b. 1964), PhD, Yakub Kolas Institute of Linguistics of the Center for the Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Head of the Department of Ethnolinguistics (Surhanava 1, Corpus 2, 220072 Minsk, Belarus), elboganeva@gmail.com

Mare Kõiva (b. 1954), PhD, Estonian Literary Museum, Lead Research Fellow of the Department of Folkloristics, acting head of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian ­Studies (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), mare@folklore.ee

Keywords: rhetoric, „The Anxiety of Influence”, irony, metonymy, metaphor, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man

The inspiration for this article came from Jüri Talvet’s observation that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s „Faust” and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald’s „Kalevipoeg” show some remarkable similarities in their philosophical structure and plot. This article therefore aims to compare these two masterpieces by using Harold Bloom’s and Paul de Man’s understanding of tropes. While allusion and intertextuality studies typically focus on a limited number of similarities between two texts, Bloom’s anxiety of influence theory helps to apprehend both texts as a whole. This objective is achievable with two constraints. Firstly, making such a comparison requires us to widen our understanding of tropes. In this analysis, tropes do not signify limited transfers of meaning (from one word to another), but the full transformation of a text’s meaning. The background to this article lies in the hypothesis that large chunks of ­„Kalevipoeg” can be read as tropes that are derived from the verses of „Faust”. ­Secondly, this kind of analysis cannot focus on the style, genre or semantic nuances of both works, but only on the general picture: the stories and their protagonists. The anxiety of influence theory shows that the change of meaning from one work to another can be described by means of two kinds of tropes: limiting and repeating ones. In this article, the limiting tropes of irony, metonymy and metaphor can be used to depict the change of meaning from „Faust” to „Kalevipoeg”. The story of an intellectual who makes a pact with the devil, seeks absolute love and wishes to accomplish godly deeds becomes a story of a mythically strong hero who has no choice, never finds true love and achieves predestined greatness. According to Bloom, this is only half of the comparison. In a follow-up article, I will show how the repeating tropes of synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis can be used to demonstrate that the fate of these different protagonists is in fact somewhat similar.

 

Tõnis Parksepp (b. 1987), MA, freelance dramatist; University of Tartu, doctoral student at the Institute of Cultural Research (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tonisparksepp@gmail.com

Keywords: semantic types, polysemy, lexicography, lexicology, perception adjectives, corpus linguistics, Estonian

The article aims to identify the patterns of systematic polysemy for Estonian tactile adjectives using semantic types and corpus data. It also discusses the presentation of semantic patterns in a dictionary. This will help to provide a theoretical basis for lexicographers and to align the presentation of adjective polysemy in dictionaries. The dataset for the study consists of 265 tactile adjectives.

The corpus manager and text analysis software Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004, 2014) is used for corpus context analysis. The program allows to observe the collocations of a word based on various statistics, to generate word sketches, and to study words used in similar contexts by means of the thesaurus function. To find the patterns, semantic types are assigned to meanings and similarities are searched between meaning shifts. For tagging the adjective meanings, the semantic types developed to describe Estonian (polysemous) adjectives (Tuulik 2014; Tuulik, Langemets 2016) are used, and for noun meanings, the semantic types of the Estonian noun developed by Margit Langemets (2010) are used. The research method used for analyzing polysemy in the article is of a practical nature and has grown out of real-life lexicographical work.

A total of 13 polysemy patterns emerged in the tactile adjective group. The most common shift was from tactile characteristics to psychological characteristics (in the sense structure of 43 words). Shifts could be observed from pleasant tactile sensations to positive mental characteristics (e.g pehme padi ‘soft pillow’, pehme loomuga ‘soft-natured’) and from unpleasant touch experience to mentally unpleasant experience (okkaline roos ‘thorny rose’, okkaline iseloom ‘thorny character’). The study of systematic polysemy points to a strong link between the domains of tactile touch and feelings.

The lexicographic presentation of polysemous patterns varied. The pattern was represented as: 1) two distinct primary meanings; 2) primary meaning and submeaning(s); 3) a common aggregate meaning; 4) systematic polysemy that appeared in the corpus but was not presented. The analysis showed that lexicographers may perceive and present one and the same pattern in different ways; therefore, familiarity with polysemy patterns associated with the respective semantic type could contribute to a more systematic presentation.

 

Maria Tuulik (b. 1985), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer (Roosi­krantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), maria.tuulik@eki.ee

Keywords: usage-based linguistics, corpus linguistics, language planning, corpus planning, verb government, Estonian

For over a century, attempts have been made in Estonian language planning to standardize the oblique case selection of verbs (traditionally: verb government), but variation persists in actual language use. In this paper we look at the case selection patterns of a number of verbs, with which variation is said to occur without any semantic difference.

We look at the historical process of how corpus planning has decided on the “right” case-selection and compare it to actual language use from 1900–1939 and 2019–2021. Our analysis shows that variation is still present in the 2019–2021 data. A detailed multifactorial analysis of variation between comitative or allative marking of the oblique argument of the verb sarnanema ‘to resemble’ reveals that the most important factor affecting the choice between the two is in fact semantic, which has remained unnoticed by language planners for over a century. Language planners should therefore systematically take into account the results of linguistic research (based on actual language use), and linguists, in turn, should pay attention to variations in Standard Estonian in order to provide new input for language planners.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher, Language Planner (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Liina Lindström (b. 1973), PhD, University of Tartu, Professor of Modern Estonian Lan­guage (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), liina.lindstrom@ut.ee

Keywords: autobiographical writings, modernity, nature, vernacular literarcy

The article looks at nature references in texts written in the 1890s by two men born in the middle of the 19^th century: namely, the autobiographical writings of farmer and school teacher Paulus Paurmann (1850–1903), and the diary of miller Märt Siipsen (1846–1916). Paurmann and Siipsen can be called vernacular literati – despite their poor education they were eager to participate in the modern literary sphere as both readers and writers. Both men depended on nature in their livelihood – this combined with their interest in contemporary literary matters makes them good examples of the spread of modern ideas about nature among the lower social classes. 

The influence of these ideas can manifest in at least three different ways: (1) as an interest in modern scientific ideas; (2) as a wish to shape nature – plant new species, apply new technologies; (3) by using nature (as well as poetic language stemming from nature) to express one’s identity, to position oneself with respect to modern identity markers.

In Siipsen’s text we can see two different ways of positioning oneself in relation to nature: passive (religious) and active (practical). In some passages he states that everything which happens in nature depends on God, whereas in others he describes attempts at designing his surroundings by adding new plants and birds. The relationship between the two remains ambiguous. 

Paurmann has written two autobiographies. The earlier one uses a lot of descriptions of and metaphorical references to nature and its composition adheres to the poetics of sentimental chapbooks; the latter one is written in plain language and barely mentions nature at all. That is to say, references to nature in his writings depend on the chosen poetic language.

In conclusion, we can see that both men have incorporated into their writings certain new ideas about nature that were disseminated in the written discourse at the time. Siipsen mostly describes new ways of designing one’s farmyard, whereas Paurmann turns to poetic uses of nature.

 

Katre Kikas (b. 1981), MA, Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folklore Studies, Researcher (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), katre.kikas@folklore.ee

Keywords: 21st century literature, eco-fiction, citizen science, ornithology

The article compares birdwatchers’ experience of nature with the natural environment as conveyed in literary fiction. The source materials comprise, first of all, interviews conducted with (mostly amateur) Estonian birdwatchers and, secondly, contemporary Estonian and Swedish literary fiction: Maarja Pärtna’s prose poetry collection “The Living City” (Elav linn, 2022), Andrus Kivirähk’s book “Flight to the Moon” (Lend Kuule, 2022), Tõnis Tootsen’s novel “Pâté of the Apes: One Primate’s Thoughts and Memories” (Ahvide pasteet, 2022) and Kerstin Ekman’s novel “The Wolf Run” (Löpa varg, 2021; Estonian translation 2022). The focus is on whether and how the concerns of nature observers relate to anxiety about changes in the natural environment as expressed in contemporary literature. Amateur environmental ­science projects aim to draw attention to concerns about the natural environment and climate change and thereby strive for a smaller personal environmental impact. Eco-fiction, in turn, puts environmental issues into words, setting them into a fathomable, although perhaps altogether unexpected scale: hence, eco-prose and -poesy are essential ways of perceiving that also serve to interpret the ongoing changes.

Environment-oriented literary culture has responded to issues with the natural environment before. Now, too, it can be concluded that environmental concerns have made a forceful entry into literature. All of the above-mentioned authors have found their unique way of conceptualizing our home in an era of environmental crises. Their recently published works tell stories about our surroundings and interpret the present situation; they discuss the anthropocentric viewpoint or depict the human focus from an unexpected perspective; they draw attention to our alien­ation from nature; they reposition the reader and thereby seek solutions to environmental issues. Among other things, they highlight environmentally friendly ways of living and experiencing the world or look at the world through non-human eyes, thus bringing the narrator closer to other forms of being. The writers share with birdwatchers the post-humanist idea of the equality of species as well as a sharp eye for their subject.

 

Elle-Mari Talivee (b. 1974), PhD, Estonian Academy of Sciences, Under and Tuglas ­Literature Centre, Senior Researcher (Väikese Illimari 12, 11623 Tallinn); Tallinn University, Research Fellow, ellemari@utkk.ee

Keywords: Estonian literature, curricula, literary education, Soviet schools, ideology, identity

The article looks at changes in the literature curriculum throughout the Soviet occupation. It discusses the content of the curricula, the ideological context, as well as the proportion of the curriculum dedicated to literary education. Due to the sheer volume of the material available, the article limits itself to mapping out the topic: whether and how the ideological emphases evolved during different periods (Stalinism, the Khrushchev Thaw, the Era of Stagnation); the ratio of Russian (Soviet) to Estonian authors covered in the literary curriculum; the educational system paradoxes involved in literature as a school subject that allows for the expression of certain views.

Three observations are drawn in conclusion.

Firstly, in ideological and party-led education, literature lessons held a special place in Soviet schools. Literature – alongside history – was considered the most important subject for shaping the students’ views.

Secondly, a remarkable portion of the curriculum was allotted to literary education conceived in this manner, to make sure that the mandated authors could be discussed in depth. Without doubt, this involved communist instruction – the intensity of which varied greatly depending on the head of school, the teachers and the decade at hand. However, Estonian literature, especially the literary classics, could still be covered extensively alongside the ideological instruction.

Thirdly, literature lessons evolved into a sphere for the discussion of Estonian nationhood, owing to the fact that the accepted authors represented seminal texts, the examination of which made it possible to also talk about Estonian literary history. In the history of teaching and studying Estonian literature, the Soviet era was particularly notable for its emphasis on literary classics, which undeniably played a crucial role in the preservation of national identity.

The article also notes that Estonian literature largely lost this role in general education schools after Estonia regained its independence.

 

Maarja Vaino (b. 1976), PhD, literary scholar and Director of Tallinn Literary Centre ­(Koidula 12a, 10125 Tallinn), maarja.vaino@gmail.com

Keywords: 1960 Song Festival, exile, Eduard Tubin, cultural relations, splitted society, Soviet influence measures

Khrushchev’s policy of building cultural relations with the West opened up a possibility for communication between Estonians home and abroad in the late 1950s. From the Soviet perspective, this contact was aimed at weakening the anti-Soviet attitudes of refugee organizations and splitting the community that fled to the West. As a consequence of the non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, a portion of the community was determined not to visit their homeland until it was free. Another part, however, did not see much wrong with a trip to their native land. The disagreements and internal divisions of the community inspired the Soviet officials to influence the refugees in different ways. Making use of people’s homesickness and their wish to see friends and family, a number of people were selected for positive inclusion through cultural contact and other means in order to encourage other refugees to follow their example and change their behaviour and attitudes. The 1960 Song Festival seemed like a perfect opportunity to invite people to visit their homeland. The Festival was also meant to coax the acclaimed conductor and composer Eduard Tubin to visit Estonia.

However, the Song Festival failed to activate communication to the desired degree and Tubin also refused to participate. The manipulation of Tubin, which focused on his professional motivation and connections with former colleagues and acquain­tances, finally bore fruit in December 1961. The Ministry of State Security of the Estonian SSR considered this a breakthrough in changing the attitudes of the exiles, as the “emigrant leaders” reacted to Tubin’s visit with calls to refrain from visiting Estonia, which in turn sowed resentment among those who were looking forward to visiting their homeland and deepened internal contradictions. The debate that erupted around attending the Song Festival in Tallinn as well as Tubin’s trip to Estonia brought into view the fragmentation of the Estonian diaspora, the existential concerns of people living in exile that the Soviet authorities deliberately amplified in order to use them for their benefit through various influence operations.

 

Aigi Rahi-Tamm (b. 1965), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of History and Archaeology, Professor of Archival Studies (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), aigi.rahi-tamm@ut.ee

Keywords: family relationships, life narrative, life writing, personal experience stories, trauma

Recent public debates on family-related issues (What constitutes a traditional family? How widespread is domestic violence? What is the purpose of child protective services?) prompted an examination of these themes from the perspective of people’s personal experience. The article is based on manuscripts of life narratives obtained from the collection of Estonian Life Histories in the Estonian Cultural History Archives (EKM EKLA, f 350). The narratives were written down between 1989 and 2017 and provide a glimpse into the societal changes that took place between the 1930s and the early 21^st century. The favoured narrative techniques and the ways these changed at the end of the 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century also become apparent. The article compares Estonian narratives with Finnish ones. The comparison is aided by similar collection methods used both for Estonian and Finnish stories – these are thematic narratives archived by volunteer correspondents. More specifically, the focus is on generational conflicts present in life narratives.

Family relationships (including conflicts) are revealed in the narratives through the lens chosen by the narrator. It seems that family relationships were overshadowed by political issues in Estonian life stories narrated in the 1990s: the narrators concentrated on descriptions of people’s relationship with the Soviet power, including repressive experiences. In the early 2000s, this perspective receded, allowing more space for descriptions of relationships within the family. Depictions of post-war childhood sometimes suggest that children who grew up separately from their mother due to economic, social or other reasons never developed a close bond with her. In narratives collected in 2017, the narrator often looks at her life experience both as a daughter and a mother. In such cases, the focus of the narrative shifts from the relationship between herself and her mother to the development of the narrator as a person.

The comparison between Finnish and Estonian stories reveals that Finnish families tended to remain silent on difficult circumstances, whereas Estonian narratives emphasized the parents’ ability to explain difficult situations to children. Comparing the stories also pointed to a change in the family structure and functions in the 20^th century: the pre-war family model included the parents and the children, while in wartime and post-war families, the mother had to take on the father’s former responsibilities. In Finnish research, this is addressed through the lens of trauma studies (e.g., the aggressiveness of the exhausted single mother towards her children). In Estonia, the issue is seen through the framework of the impact of political repressions on a person’s life. However, the trauma discourse is also evident in Estonian narratives. That is, if the narrators themselves have used corporal punishment on their own children. In such cases, the focus is not so much on the events that took place as on a perception of changing values.

 

Tiiu Jaago (b. 1960), PhD, Associate Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tiiu.jaago@ut.ee

Keywords: life after death, categories of time, travels in the land of the dead, religious tales

The article presents a comparative historical analysis of fairy tales of the Friends in Life and Death (ATU/SUS 470) plot type, their features and distribution among Belarusians, Russians and Estonians. In the Estonian and Belarusian material, stories of this type are in some cases contaminated with the ATU 470A and 471A types.

We examine differences in the flow of time in the real world and other worlds, and consider the features of the chronotope of fairy tales and the organization of artistic space within them, as well as ways of transition and communication between the worlds.

According to the most common plot of ATU/SUS 470 fairy tales, two friends promise to be guests at each other’s weddings. One of them dies and the living friend invites the dead one to his wedding; however, after receiving a counter-invitation, he finds himself in another world. There he either travels with the deceased friend through his world, where he sees various curiosities and paradoxes, or celebrates at the wedding of the deceased friend. It seems to the living person that he spent several hours with the deceased friend (or with his brother or father in some Estonian versions), but when he returns to his own world, he discovers that decades or centuries have passed on Earth. Most often, after this discovery, the hero dies and turns to dust, but there are some rare Estonian versions where he miraculously restores ­himself and his bride to their original state (and age), after which they get married again.

 

Alena Boganeva (b. 1964), PhD, Yakub Kolas Institute of Linguistics of the Center for the Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Head of the Department of Ethnolinguistics (Surhanava 1, Corpus 2, 220072 Minsk, Belarus), elboganeva@gmail.com

Mare Kõiva (b. 1954), PhD, Estonian Literary Museum, Lead Research Fellow of the Department of Folkloristics, acting head of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian ­Studies (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), mare@folklore.ee

Keywords: rhetoric, „The Anxiety of Influence”, irony, metonymy, metaphor, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man

The inspiration for this article came from Jüri Talvet’s observation that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s „Faust” and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald’s „Kalevipoeg” show some remarkable similarities in their philosophical structure and plot. This article therefore aims to compare these two masterpieces by using Harold Bloom’s and Paul de Man’s understanding of tropes. While allusion and intertextuality studies typically focus on a limited number of similarities between two texts, Bloom’s anxiety of influence theory helps to apprehend both texts as a whole. This objective is achievable with two constraints. Firstly, making such a comparison requires us to widen our understanding of tropes. In this analysis, tropes do not signify limited transfers of meaning (from one word to another), but the full transformation of a text’s meaning. The background to this article lies in the hypothesis that large chunks of ­„Kalevipoeg” can be read as tropes that are derived from the verses of „Faust”. ­Secondly, this kind of analysis cannot focus on the style, genre or semantic nuances of both works, but only on the general picture: the stories and their protagonists. The anxiety of influence theory shows that the change of meaning from one work to another can be described by means of two kinds of tropes: limiting and repeating ones. In this article, the limiting tropes of irony, metonymy and metaphor can be used to depict the change of meaning from „Faust” to „Kalevipoeg”. The story of an intellectual who makes a pact with the devil, seeks absolute love and wishes to accomplish godly deeds becomes a story of a mythically strong hero who has no choice, never finds true love and achieves predestined greatness. According to Bloom, this is only half of the comparison. In a follow-up article, I will show how the repeating tropes of synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis can be used to demonstrate that the fate of these different protagonists is in fact somewhat similar.

 

Tõnis Parksepp (b. 1987), MA, freelance dramatist; University of Tartu, doctoral student at the Institute of Cultural Research (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tonisparksepp@gmail.com

Keywords: semantic types, polysemy, lexicography, lexicology, perception adjectives, corpus linguistics, Estonian

The article aims to identify the patterns of systematic polysemy for Estonian tactile adjectives using semantic types and corpus data. It also discusses the presentation of semantic patterns in a dictionary. This will help to provide a theoretical basis for lexicographers and to align the presentation of adjective polysemy in dictionaries. The dataset for the study consists of 265 tactile adjectives.

The corpus manager and text analysis software Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004, 2014) is used for corpus context analysis. The program allows to observe the collocations of a word based on various statistics, to generate word sketches, and to study words used in similar contexts by means of the thesaurus function. To find the patterns, semantic types are assigned to meanings and similarities are searched between meaning shifts. For tagging the adjective meanings, the semantic types developed to describe Estonian (polysemous) adjectives (Tuulik 2014; Tuulik, Langemets 2016) are used, and for noun meanings, the semantic types of the Estonian noun developed by Margit Langemets (2010) are used. The research method used for analyzing polysemy in the article is of a practical nature and has grown out of real-life lexicographical work.

A total of 13 polysemy patterns emerged in the tactile adjective group. The most common shift was from tactile characteristics to psychological characteristics (in the sense structure of 43 words). Shifts could be observed from pleasant tactile sensations to positive mental characteristics (e.g pehme padi ‘soft pillow’, pehme loomuga ‘soft-natured’) and from unpleasant touch experience to mentally unpleasant experience (okkaline roos ‘thorny rose’, okkaline iseloom ‘thorny character’). The study of systematic polysemy points to a strong link between the domains of tactile touch and feelings.

The lexicographic presentation of polysemous patterns varied. The pattern was represented as: 1) two distinct primary meanings; 2) primary meaning and submeaning(s); 3) a common aggregate meaning; 4) systematic polysemy that appeared in the corpus but was not presented. The analysis showed that lexicographers may perceive and present one and the same pattern in different ways; therefore, familiarity with polysemy patterns associated with the respective semantic type could contribute to a more systematic presentation.

 

Maria Tuulik (b. 1985), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer (Roosi­krantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), maria.tuulik@eki.ee

Keywords: usage-based linguistics, corpus linguistics, language planning, corpus planning, verb government, Estonian

For over a century, attempts have been made in Estonian language planning to standardize the oblique case selection of verbs (traditionally: verb government), but variation persists in actual language use. In this paper we look at the case selection patterns of a number of verbs, with which variation is said to occur without any semantic difference.

We look at the historical process of how corpus planning has decided on the “right” case-selection and compare it to actual language use from 1900–1939 and 2019–2021. Our analysis shows that variation is still present in the 2019–2021 data. A detailed multifactorial analysis of variation between comitative or allative marking of the oblique argument of the verb sarnanema ‘to resemble’ reveals that the most important factor affecting the choice between the two is in fact semantic, which has remained unnoticed by language planners for over a century. Language planners should therefore systematically take into account the results of linguistic research (based on actual language use), and linguists, in turn, should pay attention to variations in Standard Estonian in order to provide new input for language planners.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher, Language Planner (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Liina Lindström (b. 1973), PhD, University of Tartu, Professor of Modern Estonian Lan­guage (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), liina.lindstrom@ut.ee

Keywords: autobiographical writings, modernity, nature, vernacular literarcy

The article looks at nature references in texts written in the 1890s by two men born in the middle of the 19^th century: namely, the autobiographical writings of farmer and school teacher Paulus Paurmann (1850–1903), and the diary of miller Märt Siipsen (1846–1916). Paurmann and Siipsen can be called vernacular literati – despite their poor education they were eager to participate in the modern literary sphere as both readers and writers. Both men depended on nature in their livelihood – this combined with their interest in contemporary literary matters makes them good examples of the spread of modern ideas about nature among the lower social classes. 

The influence of these ideas can manifest in at least three different ways: (1) as an interest in modern scientific ideas; (2) as a wish to shape nature – plant new species, apply new technologies; (3) by using nature (as well as poetic language stemming from nature) to express one’s identity, to position oneself with respect to modern identity markers.

In Siipsen’s text we can see two different ways of positioning oneself in relation to nature: passive (religious) and active (practical). In some passages he states that everything which happens in nature depends on God, whereas in others he describes attempts at designing his surroundings by adding new plants and birds. The relationship between the two remains ambiguous. 

Paurmann has written two autobiographies. The earlier one uses a lot of descriptions of and metaphorical references to nature and its composition adheres to the poetics of sentimental chapbooks; the latter one is written in plain language and barely mentions nature at all. That is to say, references to nature in his writings depend on the chosen poetic language.

In conclusion, we can see that both men have incorporated into their writings certain new ideas about nature that were disseminated in the written discourse at the time. Siipsen mostly describes new ways of designing one’s farmyard, whereas Paurmann turns to poetic uses of nature.

 

Katre Kikas (b. 1981), MA, Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folklore Studies, Researcher (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), katre.kikas@folklore.ee

Keywords: 21st century literature, eco-fiction, citizen science, ornithology

The article compares birdwatchers’ experience of nature with the natural environment as conveyed in literary fiction. The source materials comprise, first of all, interviews conducted with (mostly amateur) Estonian birdwatchers and, secondly, contemporary Estonian and Swedish literary fiction: Maarja Pärtna’s prose poetry collection “The Living City” (Elav linn, 2022), Andrus Kivirähk’s book “Flight to the Moon” (Lend Kuule, 2022), Tõnis Tootsen’s novel “Pâté of the Apes: One Primate’s Thoughts and Memories” (Ahvide pasteet, 2022) and Kerstin Ekman’s novel “The Wolf Run” (Löpa varg, 2021; Estonian translation 2022). The focus is on whether and how the concerns of nature observers relate to anxiety about changes in the natural environment as expressed in contemporary literature. Amateur environmental ­science projects aim to draw attention to concerns about the natural environment and climate change and thereby strive for a smaller personal environmental impact. Eco-fiction, in turn, puts environmental issues into words, setting them into a fathomable, although perhaps altogether unexpected scale: hence, eco-prose and -poesy are essential ways of perceiving that also serve to interpret the ongoing changes.

Environment-oriented literary culture has responded to issues with the natural environment before. Now, too, it can be concluded that environmental concerns have made a forceful entry into literature. All of the above-mentioned authors have found their unique way of conceptualizing our home in an era of environmental crises. Their recently published works tell stories about our surroundings and interpret the present situation; they discuss the anthropocentric viewpoint or depict the human focus from an unexpected perspective; they draw attention to our alien­ation from nature; they reposition the reader and thereby seek solutions to environmental issues. Among other things, they highlight environmentally friendly ways of living and experiencing the world or look at the world through non-human eyes, thus bringing the narrator closer to other forms of being. The writers share with birdwatchers the post-humanist idea of the equality of species as well as a sharp eye for their subject.

 

Elle-Mari Talivee (b. 1974), PhD, Estonian Academy of Sciences, Under and Tuglas ­Literature Centre, Senior Researcher (Väikese Illimari 12, 11623 Tallinn); Tallinn University, Research Fellow, ellemari@utkk.ee

Keywords: Estonian literature, curricula, literary education, Soviet schools, ideology, identity

The article looks at changes in the literature curriculum throughout the Soviet occupation. It discusses the content of the curricula, the ideological context, as well as the proportion of the curriculum dedicated to literary education. Due to the sheer volume of the material available, the article limits itself to mapping out the topic: whether and how the ideological emphases evolved during different periods (Stalinism, the Khrushchev Thaw, the Era of Stagnation); the ratio of Russian (Soviet) to Estonian authors covered in the literary curriculum; the educational system paradoxes involved in literature as a school subject that allows for the expression of certain views.

Three observations are drawn in conclusion.

Firstly, in ideological and party-led education, literature lessons held a special place in Soviet schools. Literature – alongside history – was considered the most important subject for shaping the students’ views.

Secondly, a remarkable portion of the curriculum was allotted to literary education conceived in this manner, to make sure that the mandated authors could be discussed in depth. Without doubt, this involved communist instruction – the intensity of which varied greatly depending on the head of school, the teachers and the decade at hand. However, Estonian literature, especially the literary classics, could still be covered extensively alongside the ideological instruction.

Thirdly, literature lessons evolved into a sphere for the discussion of Estonian nationhood, owing to the fact that the accepted authors represented seminal texts, the examination of which made it possible to also talk about Estonian literary history. In the history of teaching and studying Estonian literature, the Soviet era was particularly notable for its emphasis on literary classics, which undeniably played a crucial role in the preservation of national identity.

The article also notes that Estonian literature largely lost this role in general education schools after Estonia regained its independence.

 

Maarja Vaino (b. 1976), PhD, literary scholar and Director of Tallinn Literary Centre ­(Koidula 12a, 10125 Tallinn), maarja.vaino@gmail.com

Keywords: 1960 Song Festival, exile, Eduard Tubin, cultural relations, splitted society, Soviet influence measures

Khrushchev’s policy of building cultural relations with the West opened up a possibility for communication between Estonians home and abroad in the late 1950s. From the Soviet perspective, this contact was aimed at weakening the anti-Soviet attitudes of refugee organizations and splitting the community that fled to the West. As a consequence of the non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, a portion of the community was determined not to visit their homeland until it was free. Another part, however, did not see much wrong with a trip to their native land. The disagreements and internal divisions of the community inspired the Soviet officials to influence the refugees in different ways. Making use of people’s homesickness and their wish to see friends and family, a number of people were selected for positive inclusion through cultural contact and other means in order to encourage other refugees to follow their example and change their behaviour and attitudes. The 1960 Song Festival seemed like a perfect opportunity to invite people to visit their homeland. The Festival was also meant to coax the acclaimed conductor and composer Eduard Tubin to visit Estonia.

However, the Song Festival failed to activate communication to the desired degree and Tubin also refused to participate. The manipulation of Tubin, which focused on his professional motivation and connections with former colleagues and acquain­tances, finally bore fruit in December 1961. The Ministry of State Security of the Estonian SSR considered this a breakthrough in changing the attitudes of the exiles, as the “emigrant leaders” reacted to Tubin’s visit with calls to refrain from visiting Estonia, which in turn sowed resentment among those who were looking forward to visiting their homeland and deepened internal contradictions. The debate that erupted around attending the Song Festival in Tallinn as well as Tubin’s trip to Estonia brought into view the fragmentation of the Estonian diaspora, the existential concerns of people living in exile that the Soviet authorities deliberately amplified in order to use them for their benefit through various influence operations.

 

Aigi Rahi-Tamm (b. 1965), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of History and Archaeology, Professor of Archival Studies (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), aigi.rahi-tamm@ut.ee

Keywords: family relationships, life narrative, life writing, personal experience stories, trauma

Recent public debates on family-related issues (What constitutes a traditional family? How widespread is domestic violence? What is the purpose of child protective services?) prompted an examination of these themes from the perspective of people’s personal experience. The article is based on manuscripts of life narratives obtained from the collection of Estonian Life Histories in the Estonian Cultural History Archives (EKM EKLA, f 350). The narratives were written down between 1989 and 2017 and provide a glimpse into the societal changes that took place between the 1930s and the early 21^st century. The favoured narrative techniques and the ways these changed at the end of the 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century also become apparent. The article compares Estonian narratives with Finnish ones. The comparison is aided by similar collection methods used both for Estonian and Finnish stories – these are thematic narratives archived by volunteer correspondents. More specifically, the focus is on generational conflicts present in life narratives.

Family relationships (including conflicts) are revealed in the narratives through the lens chosen by the narrator. It seems that family relationships were overshadowed by political issues in Estonian life stories narrated in the 1990s: the narrators concentrated on descriptions of people’s relationship with the Soviet power, including repressive experiences. In the early 2000s, this perspective receded, allowing more space for descriptions of relationships within the family. Depictions of post-war childhood sometimes suggest that children who grew up separately from their mother due to economic, social or other reasons never developed a close bond with her. In narratives collected in 2017, the narrator often looks at her life experience both as a daughter and a mother. In such cases, the focus of the narrative shifts from the relationship between herself and her mother to the development of the narrator as a person.

The comparison between Finnish and Estonian stories reveals that Finnish families tended to remain silent on difficult circumstances, whereas Estonian narratives emphasized the parents’ ability to explain difficult situations to children. Comparing the stories also pointed to a change in the family structure and functions in the 20^th century: the pre-war family model included the parents and the children, while in wartime and post-war families, the mother had to take on the father’s former responsibilities. In Finnish research, this is addressed through the lens of trauma studies (e.g., the aggressiveness of the exhausted single mother towards her children). In Estonia, the issue is seen through the framework of the impact of political repressions on a person’s life. However, the trauma discourse is also evident in Estonian narratives. That is, if the narrators themselves have used corporal punishment on their own children. In such cases, the focus is not so much on the events that took place as on a perception of changing values.

 

Tiiu Jaago (b. 1960), PhD, Associate Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tiiu.jaago@ut.ee

Keywords: life after death, categories of time, travels in the land of the dead, religious tales

The article presents a comparative historical analysis of fairy tales of the Friends in Life and Death (ATU/SUS 470) plot type, their features and distribution among Belarusians, Russians and Estonians. In the Estonian and Belarusian material, stories of this type are in some cases contaminated with the ATU 470A and 471A types.

We examine differences in the flow of time in the real world and other worlds, and consider the features of the chronotope of fairy tales and the organization of artistic space within them, as well as ways of transition and communication between the worlds.

According to the most common plot of ATU/SUS 470 fairy tales, two friends promise to be guests at each other’s weddings. One of them dies and the living friend invites the dead one to his wedding; however, after receiving a counter-invitation, he finds himself in another world. There he either travels with the deceased friend through his world, where he sees various curiosities and paradoxes, or celebrates at the wedding of the deceased friend. It seems to the living person that he spent several hours with the deceased friend (or with his brother or father in some Estonian versions), but when he returns to his own world, he discovers that decades or centuries have passed on Earth. Most often, after this discovery, the hero dies and turns to dust, but there are some rare Estonian versions where he miraculously restores ­himself and his bride to their original state (and age), after which they get married again.

 

Alena Boganeva (b. 1964), PhD, Yakub Kolas Institute of Linguistics of the Center for the Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Head of the Department of Ethnolinguistics (Surhanava 1, Corpus 2, 220072 Minsk, Belarus), elboganeva@gmail.com

Mare Kõiva (b. 1954), PhD, Estonian Literary Museum, Lead Research Fellow of the Department of Folkloristics, acting head of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian ­Studies (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), mare@folklore.ee

Keywords: rhetoric, „The Anxiety of Influence”, irony, metonymy, metaphor, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man

The inspiration for this article came from Jüri Talvet’s observation that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s „Faust” and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald’s „Kalevipoeg” show some remarkable similarities in their philosophical structure and plot. This article therefore aims to compare these two masterpieces by using Harold Bloom’s and Paul de Man’s understanding of tropes. While allusion and intertextuality studies typically focus on a limited number of similarities between two texts, Bloom’s anxiety of influence theory helps to apprehend both texts as a whole. This objective is achievable with two constraints. Firstly, making such a comparison requires us to widen our understanding of tropes. In this analysis, tropes do not signify limited transfers of meaning (from one word to another), but the full transformation of a text’s meaning. The background to this article lies in the hypothesis that large chunks of ­„Kalevipoeg” can be read as tropes that are derived from the verses of „Faust”. ­Secondly, this kind of analysis cannot focus on the style, genre or semantic nuances of both works, but only on the general picture: the stories and their protagonists. The anxiety of influence theory shows that the change of meaning from one work to another can be described by means of two kinds of tropes: limiting and repeating ones. In this article, the limiting tropes of irony, metonymy and metaphor can be used to depict the change of meaning from „Faust” to „Kalevipoeg”. The story of an intellectual who makes a pact with the devil, seeks absolute love and wishes to accomplish godly deeds becomes a story of a mythically strong hero who has no choice, never finds true love and achieves predestined greatness. According to Bloom, this is only half of the comparison. In a follow-up article, I will show how the repeating tropes of synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis can be used to demonstrate that the fate of these different protagonists is in fact somewhat similar.

 

Tõnis Parksepp (b. 1987), MA, freelance dramatist; University of Tartu, doctoral student at the Institute of Cultural Research (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tonisparksepp@gmail.com

Keywords: semantic types, polysemy, lexicography, lexicology, perception adjectives, corpus linguistics, Estonian

The article aims to identify the patterns of systematic polysemy for Estonian tactile adjectives using semantic types and corpus data. It also discusses the presentation of semantic patterns in a dictionary. This will help to provide a theoretical basis for lexicographers and to align the presentation of adjective polysemy in dictionaries. The dataset for the study consists of 265 tactile adjectives.

The corpus manager and text analysis software Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004, 2014) is used for corpus context analysis. The program allows to observe the collocations of a word based on various statistics, to generate word sketches, and to study words used in similar contexts by means of the thesaurus function. To find the patterns, semantic types are assigned to meanings and similarities are searched between meaning shifts. For tagging the adjective meanings, the semantic types developed to describe Estonian (polysemous) adjectives (Tuulik 2014; Tuulik, Langemets 2016) are used, and for noun meanings, the semantic types of the Estonian noun developed by Margit Langemets (2010) are used. The research method used for analyzing polysemy in the article is of a practical nature and has grown out of real-life lexicographical work.

A total of 13 polysemy patterns emerged in the tactile adjective group. The most common shift was from tactile characteristics to psychological characteristics (in the sense structure of 43 words). Shifts could be observed from pleasant tactile sensations to positive mental characteristics (e.g pehme padi ‘soft pillow’, pehme loomuga ‘soft-natured’) and from unpleasant touch experience to mentally unpleasant experience (okkaline roos ‘thorny rose’, okkaline iseloom ‘thorny character’). The study of systematic polysemy points to a strong link between the domains of tactile touch and feelings.

The lexicographic presentation of polysemous patterns varied. The pattern was represented as: 1) two distinct primary meanings; 2) primary meaning and submeaning(s); 3) a common aggregate meaning; 4) systematic polysemy that appeared in the corpus but was not presented. The analysis showed that lexicographers may perceive and present one and the same pattern in different ways; therefore, familiarity with polysemy patterns associated with the respective semantic type could contribute to a more systematic presentation.

 

Maria Tuulik (b. 1985), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer (Roosi­krantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), maria.tuulik@eki.ee

Keywords: usage-based linguistics, corpus linguistics, language planning, corpus planning, verb government, Estonian

For over a century, attempts have been made in Estonian language planning to standardize the oblique case selection of verbs (traditionally: verb government), but variation persists in actual language use. In this paper we look at the case selection patterns of a number of verbs, with which variation is said to occur without any semantic difference.

We look at the historical process of how corpus planning has decided on the “right” case-selection and compare it to actual language use from 1900–1939 and 2019–2021. Our analysis shows that variation is still present in the 2019–2021 data. A detailed multifactorial analysis of variation between comitative or allative marking of the oblique argument of the verb sarnanema ‘to resemble’ reveals that the most important factor affecting the choice between the two is in fact semantic, which has remained unnoticed by language planners for over a century. Language planners should therefore systematically take into account the results of linguistic research (based on actual language use), and linguists, in turn, should pay attention to variations in Standard Estonian in order to provide new input for language planners.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher, Language Planner (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Liina Lindström (b. 1973), PhD, University of Tartu, Professor of Modern Estonian Lan­guage (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), liina.lindstrom@ut.ee

Keywords: autobiographical writings, modernity, nature, vernacular literarcy

The article looks at nature references in texts written in the 1890s by two men born in the middle of the 19^th century: namely, the autobiographical writings of farmer and school teacher Paulus Paurmann (1850–1903), and the diary of miller Märt Siipsen (1846–1916). Paurmann and Siipsen can be called vernacular literati – despite their poor education they were eager to participate in the modern literary sphere as both readers and writers. Both men depended on nature in their livelihood – this combined with their interest in contemporary literary matters makes them good examples of the spread of modern ideas about nature among the lower social classes. 

The influence of these ideas can manifest in at least three different ways: (1) as an interest in modern scientific ideas; (2) as a wish to shape nature – plant new species, apply new technologies; (3) by using nature (as well as poetic language stemming from nature) to express one’s identity, to position oneself with respect to modern identity markers.

In Siipsen’s text we can see two different ways of positioning oneself in relation to nature: passive (religious) and active (practical). In some passages he states that everything which happens in nature depends on God, whereas in others he describes attempts at designing his surroundings by adding new plants and birds. The relationship between the two remains ambiguous. 

Paurmann has written two autobiographies. The earlier one uses a lot of descriptions of and metaphorical references to nature and its composition adheres to the poetics of sentimental chapbooks; the latter one is written in plain language and barely mentions nature at all. That is to say, references to nature in his writings depend on the chosen poetic language.

In conclusion, we can see that both men have incorporated into their writings certain new ideas about nature that were disseminated in the written discourse at the time. Siipsen mostly describes new ways of designing one’s farmyard, whereas Paurmann turns to poetic uses of nature.

 

Katre Kikas (b. 1981), MA, Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folklore Studies, Researcher (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), katre.kikas@folklore.ee

Keywords: 21st century literature, eco-fiction, citizen science, ornithology

The article compares birdwatchers’ experience of nature with the natural environment as conveyed in literary fiction. The source materials comprise, first of all, interviews conducted with (mostly amateur) Estonian birdwatchers and, secondly, contemporary Estonian and Swedish literary fiction: Maarja Pärtna’s prose poetry collection “The Living City” (Elav linn, 2022), Andrus Kivirähk’s book “Flight to the Moon” (Lend Kuule, 2022), Tõnis Tootsen’s novel “Pâté of the Apes: One Primate’s Thoughts and Memories” (Ahvide pasteet, 2022) and Kerstin Ekman’s novel “The Wolf Run” (Löpa varg, 2021; Estonian translation 2022). The focus is on whether and how the concerns of nature observers relate to anxiety about changes in the natural environment as expressed in contemporary literature. Amateur environmental ­science projects aim to draw attention to concerns about the natural environment and climate change and thereby strive for a smaller personal environmental impact. Eco-fiction, in turn, puts environmental issues into words, setting them into a fathomable, although perhaps altogether unexpected scale: hence, eco-prose and -poesy are essential ways of perceiving that also serve to interpret the ongoing changes.

Environment-oriented literary culture has responded to issues with the natural environment before. Now, too, it can be concluded that environmental concerns have made a forceful entry into literature. All of the above-mentioned authors have found their unique way of conceptualizing our home in an era of environmental crises. Their recently published works tell stories about our surroundings and interpret the present situation; they discuss the anthropocentric viewpoint or depict the human focus from an unexpected perspective; they draw attention to our alien­ation from nature; they reposition the reader and thereby seek solutions to environmental issues. Among other things, they highlight environmentally friendly ways of living and experiencing the world or look at the world through non-human eyes, thus bringing the narrator closer to other forms of being. The writers share with birdwatchers the post-humanist idea of the equality of species as well as a sharp eye for their subject.

 

Elle-Mari Talivee (b. 1974), PhD, Estonian Academy of Sciences, Under and Tuglas ­Literature Centre, Senior Researcher (Väikese Illimari 12, 11623 Tallinn); Tallinn University, Research Fellow, ellemari@utkk.ee

Keywords: Estonian literature, curricula, literary education, Soviet schools, ideology, identity

The article looks at changes in the literature curriculum throughout the Soviet occupation. It discusses the content of the curricula, the ideological context, as well as the proportion of the curriculum dedicated to literary education. Due to the sheer volume of the material available, the article limits itself to mapping out the topic: whether and how the ideological emphases evolved during different periods (Stalinism, the Khrushchev Thaw, the Era of Stagnation); the ratio of Russian (Soviet) to Estonian authors covered in the literary curriculum; the educational system paradoxes involved in literature as a school subject that allows for the expression of certain views.

Three observations are drawn in conclusion.

Firstly, in ideological and party-led education, literature lessons held a special place in Soviet schools. Literature – alongside history – was considered the most important subject for shaping the students’ views.

Secondly, a remarkable portion of the curriculum was allotted to literary education conceived in this manner, to make sure that the mandated authors could be discussed in depth. Without doubt, this involved communist instruction – the intensity of which varied greatly depending on the head of school, the teachers and the decade at hand. However, Estonian literature, especially the literary classics, could still be covered extensively alongside the ideological instruction.

Thirdly, literature lessons evolved into a sphere for the discussion of Estonian nationhood, owing to the fact that the accepted authors represented seminal texts, the examination of which made it possible to also talk about Estonian literary history. In the history of teaching and studying Estonian literature, the Soviet era was particularly notable for its emphasis on literary classics, which undeniably played a crucial role in the preservation of national identity.

The article also notes that Estonian literature largely lost this role in general education schools after Estonia regained its independence.

 

Maarja Vaino (b. 1976), PhD, literary scholar and Director of Tallinn Literary Centre ­(Koidula 12a, 10125 Tallinn), maarja.vaino@gmail.com

Keywords: 1960 Song Festival, exile, Eduard Tubin, cultural relations, splitted society, Soviet influence measures

Khrushchev’s policy of building cultural relations with the West opened up a possibility for communication between Estonians home and abroad in the late 1950s. From the Soviet perspective, this contact was aimed at weakening the anti-Soviet attitudes of refugee organizations and splitting the community that fled to the West. As a consequence of the non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, a portion of the community was determined not to visit their homeland until it was free. Another part, however, did not see much wrong with a trip to their native land. The disagreements and internal divisions of the community inspired the Soviet officials to influence the refugees in different ways. Making use of people’s homesickness and their wish to see friends and family, a number of people were selected for positive inclusion through cultural contact and other means in order to encourage other refugees to follow their example and change their behaviour and attitudes. The 1960 Song Festival seemed like a perfect opportunity to invite people to visit their homeland. The Festival was also meant to coax the acclaimed conductor and composer Eduard Tubin to visit Estonia.

However, the Song Festival failed to activate communication to the desired degree and Tubin also refused to participate. The manipulation of Tubin, which focused on his professional motivation and connections with former colleagues and acquain­tances, finally bore fruit in December 1961. The Ministry of State Security of the Estonian SSR considered this a breakthrough in changing the attitudes of the exiles, as the “emigrant leaders” reacted to Tubin’s visit with calls to refrain from visiting Estonia, which in turn sowed resentment among those who were looking forward to visiting their homeland and deepened internal contradictions. The debate that erupted around attending the Song Festival in Tallinn as well as Tubin’s trip to Estonia brought into view the fragmentation of the Estonian diaspora, the existential concerns of people living in exile that the Soviet authorities deliberately amplified in order to use them for their benefit through various influence operations.

 

Aigi Rahi-Tamm (b. 1965), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of History and Archaeology, Professor of Archival Studies (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), aigi.rahi-tamm@ut.ee

Keywords: family relationships, life narrative, life writing, personal experience stories, trauma

Recent public debates on family-related issues (What constitutes a traditional family? How widespread is domestic violence? What is the purpose of child protective services?) prompted an examination of these themes from the perspective of people’s personal experience. The article is based on manuscripts of life narratives obtained from the collection of Estonian Life Histories in the Estonian Cultural History Archives (EKM EKLA, f 350). The narratives were written down between 1989 and 2017 and provide a glimpse into the societal changes that took place between the 1930s and the early 21^st century. The favoured narrative techniques and the ways these changed at the end of the 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century also become apparent. The article compares Estonian narratives with Finnish ones. The comparison is aided by similar collection methods used both for Estonian and Finnish stories – these are thematic narratives archived by volunteer correspondents. More specifically, the focus is on generational conflicts present in life narratives.

Family relationships (including conflicts) are revealed in the narratives through the lens chosen by the narrator. It seems that family relationships were overshadowed by political issues in Estonian life stories narrated in the 1990s: the narrators concentrated on descriptions of people’s relationship with the Soviet power, including repressive experiences. In the early 2000s, this perspective receded, allowing more space for descriptions of relationships within the family. Depictions of post-war childhood sometimes suggest that children who grew up separately from their mother due to economic, social or other reasons never developed a close bond with her. In narratives collected in 2017, the narrator often looks at her life experience both as a daughter and a mother. In such cases, the focus of the narrative shifts from the relationship between herself and her mother to the development of the narrator as a person.

The comparison between Finnish and Estonian stories reveals that Finnish families tended to remain silent on difficult circumstances, whereas Estonian narratives emphasized the parents’ ability to explain difficult situations to children. Comparing the stories also pointed to a change in the family structure and functions in the 20^th century: the pre-war family model included the parents and the children, while in wartime and post-war families, the mother had to take on the father’s former responsibilities. In Finnish research, this is addressed through the lens of trauma studies (e.g., the aggressiveness of the exhausted single mother towards her children). In Estonia, the issue is seen through the framework of the impact of political repressions on a person’s life. However, the trauma discourse is also evident in Estonian narratives. That is, if the narrators themselves have used corporal punishment on their own children. In such cases, the focus is not so much on the events that took place as on a perception of changing values.

 

Tiiu Jaago (b. 1960), PhD, Associate Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tiiu.jaago@ut.ee

Keywords: life after death, categories of time, travels in the land of the dead, religious tales

The article presents a comparative historical analysis of fairy tales of the Friends in Life and Death (ATU/SUS 470) plot type, their features and distribution among Belarusians, Russians and Estonians. In the Estonian and Belarusian material, stories of this type are in some cases contaminated with the ATU 470A and 471A types.

We examine differences in the flow of time in the real world and other worlds, and consider the features of the chronotope of fairy tales and the organization of artistic space within them, as well as ways of transition and communication between the worlds.

According to the most common plot of ATU/SUS 470 fairy tales, two friends promise to be guests at each other’s weddings. One of them dies and the living friend invites the dead one to his wedding; however, after receiving a counter-invitation, he finds himself in another world. There he either travels with the deceased friend through his world, where he sees various curiosities and paradoxes, or celebrates at the wedding of the deceased friend. It seems to the living person that he spent several hours with the deceased friend (or with his brother or father in some Estonian versions), but when he returns to his own world, he discovers that decades or centuries have passed on Earth. Most often, after this discovery, the hero dies and turns to dust, but there are some rare Estonian versions where he miraculously restores ­himself and his bride to their original state (and age), after which they get married again.

 

Alena Boganeva (b. 1964), PhD, Yakub Kolas Institute of Linguistics of the Center for the Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Head of the Department of Ethnolinguistics (Surhanava 1, Corpus 2, 220072 Minsk, Belarus), elboganeva@gmail.com

Mare Kõiva (b. 1954), PhD, Estonian Literary Museum, Lead Research Fellow of the Department of Folkloristics, acting head of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian ­Studies (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), mare@folklore.ee

Keywords: rhetoric, „The Anxiety of Influence”, irony, metonymy, metaphor, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man

The inspiration for this article came from Jüri Talvet’s observation that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s „Faust” and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald’s „Kalevipoeg” show some remarkable similarities in their philosophical structure and plot. This article therefore aims to compare these two masterpieces by using Harold Bloom’s and Paul de Man’s understanding of tropes. While allusion and intertextuality studies typically focus on a limited number of similarities between two texts, Bloom’s anxiety of influence theory helps to apprehend both texts as a whole. This objective is achievable with two constraints. Firstly, making such a comparison requires us to widen our understanding of tropes. In this analysis, tropes do not signify limited transfers of meaning (from one word to another), but the full transformation of a text’s meaning. The background to this article lies in the hypothesis that large chunks of ­„Kalevipoeg” can be read as tropes that are derived from the verses of „Faust”. ­Secondly, this kind of analysis cannot focus on the style, genre or semantic nuances of both works, but only on the general picture: the stories and their protagonists. The anxiety of influence theory shows that the change of meaning from one work to another can be described by means of two kinds of tropes: limiting and repeating ones. In this article, the limiting tropes of irony, metonymy and metaphor can be used to depict the change of meaning from „Faust” to „Kalevipoeg”. The story of an intellectual who makes a pact with the devil, seeks absolute love and wishes to accomplish godly deeds becomes a story of a mythically strong hero who has no choice, never finds true love and achieves predestined greatness. According to Bloom, this is only half of the comparison. In a follow-up article, I will show how the repeating tropes of synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis can be used to demonstrate that the fate of these different protagonists is in fact somewhat similar.

 

Tõnis Parksepp (b. 1987), MA, freelance dramatist; University of Tartu, doctoral student at the Institute of Cultural Research (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tonisparksepp@gmail.com

Keywords: semantic types, polysemy, lexicography, lexicology, perception adjectives, corpus linguistics, Estonian

The article aims to identify the patterns of systematic polysemy for Estonian tactile adjectives using semantic types and corpus data. It also discusses the presentation of semantic patterns in a dictionary. This will help to provide a theoretical basis for lexicographers and to align the presentation of adjective polysemy in dictionaries. The dataset for the study consists of 265 tactile adjectives.

The corpus manager and text analysis software Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004, 2014) is used for corpus context analysis. The program allows to observe the collocations of a word based on various statistics, to generate word sketches, and to study words used in similar contexts by means of the thesaurus function. To find the patterns, semantic types are assigned to meanings and similarities are searched between meaning shifts. For tagging the adjective meanings, the semantic types developed to describe Estonian (polysemous) adjectives (Tuulik 2014; Tuulik, Langemets 2016) are used, and for noun meanings, the semantic types of the Estonian noun developed by Margit Langemets (2010) are used. The research method used for analyzing polysemy in the article is of a practical nature and has grown out of real-life lexicographical work.

A total of 13 polysemy patterns emerged in the tactile adjective group. The most common shift was from tactile characteristics to psychological characteristics (in the sense structure of 43 words). Shifts could be observed from pleasant tactile sensations to positive mental characteristics (e.g pehme padi ‘soft pillow’, pehme loomuga ‘soft-natured’) and from unpleasant touch experience to mentally unpleasant experience (okkaline roos ‘thorny rose’, okkaline iseloom ‘thorny character’). The study of systematic polysemy points to a strong link between the domains of tactile touch and feelings.

The lexicographic presentation of polysemous patterns varied. The pattern was represented as: 1) two distinct primary meanings; 2) primary meaning and submeaning(s); 3) a common aggregate meaning; 4) systematic polysemy that appeared in the corpus but was not presented. The analysis showed that lexicographers may perceive and present one and the same pattern in different ways; therefore, familiarity with polysemy patterns associated with the respective semantic type could contribute to a more systematic presentation.

 

Maria Tuulik (b. 1985), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer (Roosi­krantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), maria.tuulik@eki.ee

Keywords: usage-based linguistics, corpus linguistics, language planning, corpus planning, verb government, Estonian

For over a century, attempts have been made in Estonian language planning to standardize the oblique case selection of verbs (traditionally: verb government), but variation persists in actual language use. In this paper we look at the case selection patterns of a number of verbs, with which variation is said to occur without any semantic difference.

We look at the historical process of how corpus planning has decided on the “right” case-selection and compare it to actual language use from 1900–1939 and 2019–2021. Our analysis shows that variation is still present in the 2019–2021 data. A detailed multifactorial analysis of variation between comitative or allative marking of the oblique argument of the verb sarnanema ‘to resemble’ reveals that the most important factor affecting the choice between the two is in fact semantic, which has remained unnoticed by language planners for over a century. Language planners should therefore systematically take into account the results of linguistic research (based on actual language use), and linguists, in turn, should pay attention to variations in Standard Estonian in order to provide new input for language planners.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher, Language Planner (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Liina Lindström (b. 1973), PhD, University of Tartu, Professor of Modern Estonian Lan­guage (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), liina.lindstrom@ut.ee

Keywords: autobiographical writings, modernity, nature, vernacular literarcy

The article looks at nature references in texts written in the 1890s by two men born in the middle of the 19^th century: namely, the autobiographical writings of farmer and school teacher Paulus Paurmann (1850–1903), and the diary of miller Märt Siipsen (1846–1916). Paurmann and Siipsen can be called vernacular literati – despite their poor education they were eager to participate in the modern literary sphere as both readers and writers. Both men depended on nature in their livelihood – this combined with their interest in contemporary literary matters makes them good examples of the spread of modern ideas about nature among the lower social classes. 

The influence of these ideas can manifest in at least three different ways: (1) as an interest in modern scientific ideas; (2) as a wish to shape nature – plant new species, apply new technologies; (3) by using nature (as well as poetic language stemming from nature) to express one’s identity, to position oneself with respect to modern identity markers.

In Siipsen’s text we can see two different ways of positioning oneself in relation to nature: passive (religious) and active (practical). In some passages he states that everything which happens in nature depends on God, whereas in others he describes attempts at designing his surroundings by adding new plants and birds. The relationship between the two remains ambiguous. 

Paurmann has written two autobiographies. The earlier one uses a lot of descriptions of and metaphorical references to nature and its composition adheres to the poetics of sentimental chapbooks; the latter one is written in plain language and barely mentions nature at all. That is to say, references to nature in his writings depend on the chosen poetic language.

In conclusion, we can see that both men have incorporated into their writings certain new ideas about nature that were disseminated in the written discourse at the time. Siipsen mostly describes new ways of designing one’s farmyard, whereas Paurmann turns to poetic uses of nature.

 

Katre Kikas (b. 1981), MA, Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folklore Studies, Researcher (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), katre.kikas@folklore.ee

Keywords: 21st century literature, eco-fiction, citizen science, ornithology

The article compares birdwatchers’ experience of nature with the natural environment as conveyed in literary fiction. The source materials comprise, first of all, interviews conducted with (mostly amateur) Estonian birdwatchers and, secondly, contemporary Estonian and Swedish literary fiction: Maarja Pärtna’s prose poetry collection “The Living City” (Elav linn, 2022), Andrus Kivirähk’s book “Flight to the Moon” (Lend Kuule, 2022), Tõnis Tootsen’s novel “Pâté of the Apes: One Primate’s Thoughts and Memories” (Ahvide pasteet, 2022) and Kerstin Ekman’s novel “The Wolf Run” (Löpa varg, 2021; Estonian translation 2022). The focus is on whether and how the concerns of nature observers relate to anxiety about changes in the natural environment as expressed in contemporary literature. Amateur environmental ­science projects aim to draw attention to concerns about the natural environment and climate change and thereby strive for a smaller personal environmental impact. Eco-fiction, in turn, puts environmental issues into words, setting them into a fathomable, although perhaps altogether unexpected scale: hence, eco-prose and -poesy are essential ways of perceiving that also serve to interpret the ongoing changes.

Environment-oriented literary culture has responded to issues with the natural environment before. Now, too, it can be concluded that environmental concerns have made a forceful entry into literature. All of the above-mentioned authors have found their unique way of conceptualizing our home in an era of environmental crises. Their recently published works tell stories about our surroundings and interpret the present situation; they discuss the anthropocentric viewpoint or depict the human focus from an unexpected perspective; they draw attention to our alien­ation from nature; they reposition the reader and thereby seek solutions to environmental issues. Among other things, they highlight environmentally friendly ways of living and experiencing the world or look at the world through non-human eyes, thus bringing the narrator closer to other forms of being. The writers share with birdwatchers the post-humanist idea of the equality of species as well as a sharp eye for their subject.

 

Elle-Mari Talivee (b. 1974), PhD, Estonian Academy of Sciences, Under and Tuglas ­Literature Centre, Senior Researcher (Väikese Illimari 12, 11623 Tallinn); Tallinn University, Research Fellow, ellemari@utkk.ee

Keywords: Estonian literature, curricula, literary education, Soviet schools, ideology, identity

The article looks at changes in the literature curriculum throughout the Soviet occupation. It discusses the content of the curricula, the ideological context, as well as the proportion of the curriculum dedicated to literary education. Due to the sheer volume of the material available, the article limits itself to mapping out the topic: whether and how the ideological emphases evolved during different periods (Stalinism, the Khrushchev Thaw, the Era of Stagnation); the ratio of Russian (Soviet) to Estonian authors covered in the literary curriculum; the educational system paradoxes involved in literature as a school subject that allows for the expression of certain views.

Three observations are drawn in conclusion.

Firstly, in ideological and party-led education, literature lessons held a special place in Soviet schools. Literature – alongside history – was considered the most important subject for shaping the students’ views.

Secondly, a remarkable portion of the curriculum was allotted to literary education conceived in this manner, to make sure that the mandated authors could be discussed in depth. Without doubt, this involved communist instruction – the intensity of which varied greatly depending on the head of school, the teachers and the decade at hand. However, Estonian literature, especially the literary classics, could still be covered extensively alongside the ideological instruction.

Thirdly, literature lessons evolved into a sphere for the discussion of Estonian nationhood, owing to the fact that the accepted authors represented seminal texts, the examination of which made it possible to also talk about Estonian literary history. In the history of teaching and studying Estonian literature, the Soviet era was particularly notable for its emphasis on literary classics, which undeniably played a crucial role in the preservation of national identity.

The article also notes that Estonian literature largely lost this role in general education schools after Estonia regained its independence.

 

Maarja Vaino (b. 1976), PhD, literary scholar and Director of Tallinn Literary Centre ­(Koidula 12a, 10125 Tallinn), maarja.vaino@gmail.com

Keywords: 1960 Song Festival, exile, Eduard Tubin, cultural relations, splitted society, Soviet influence measures

Khrushchev’s policy of building cultural relations with the West opened up a possibility for communication between Estonians home and abroad in the late 1950s. From the Soviet perspective, this contact was aimed at weakening the anti-Soviet attitudes of refugee organizations and splitting the community that fled to the West. As a consequence of the non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, a portion of the community was determined not to visit their homeland until it was free. Another part, however, did not see much wrong with a trip to their native land. The disagreements and internal divisions of the community inspired the Soviet officials to influence the refugees in different ways. Making use of people’s homesickness and their wish to see friends and family, a number of people were selected for positive inclusion through cultural contact and other means in order to encourage other refugees to follow their example and change their behaviour and attitudes. The 1960 Song Festival seemed like a perfect opportunity to invite people to visit their homeland. The Festival was also meant to coax the acclaimed conductor and composer Eduard Tubin to visit Estonia.

However, the Song Festival failed to activate communication to the desired degree and Tubin also refused to participate. The manipulation of Tubin, which focused on his professional motivation and connections with former colleagues and acquain­tances, finally bore fruit in December 1961. The Ministry of State Security of the Estonian SSR considered this a breakthrough in changing the attitudes of the exiles, as the “emigrant leaders” reacted to Tubin’s visit with calls to refrain from visiting Estonia, which in turn sowed resentment among those who were looking forward to visiting their homeland and deepened internal contradictions. The debate that erupted around attending the Song Festival in Tallinn as well as Tubin’s trip to Estonia brought into view the fragmentation of the Estonian diaspora, the existential concerns of people living in exile that the Soviet authorities deliberately amplified in order to use them for their benefit through various influence operations.

 

Aigi Rahi-Tamm (b. 1965), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of History and Archaeology, Professor of Archival Studies (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), aigi.rahi-tamm@ut.ee

Keywords: family relationships, life narrative, life writing, personal experience stories, trauma

Recent public debates on family-related issues (What constitutes a traditional family? How widespread is domestic violence? What is the purpose of child protective services?) prompted an examination of these themes from the perspective of people’s personal experience. The article is based on manuscripts of life narratives obtained from the collection of Estonian Life Histories in the Estonian Cultural History Archives (EKM EKLA, f 350). The narratives were written down between 1989 and 2017 and provide a glimpse into the societal changes that took place between the 1930s and the early 21^st century. The favoured narrative techniques and the ways these changed at the end of the 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century also become apparent. The article compares Estonian narratives with Finnish ones. The comparison is aided by similar collection methods used both for Estonian and Finnish stories – these are thematic narratives archived by volunteer correspondents. More specifically, the focus is on generational conflicts present in life narratives.

Family relationships (including conflicts) are revealed in the narratives through the lens chosen by the narrator. It seems that family relationships were overshadowed by political issues in Estonian life stories narrated in the 1990s: the narrators concentrated on descriptions of people’s relationship with the Soviet power, including repressive experiences. In the early 2000s, this perspective receded, allowing more space for descriptions of relationships within the family. Depictions of post-war childhood sometimes suggest that children who grew up separately from their mother due to economic, social or other reasons never developed a close bond with her. In narratives collected in 2017, the narrator often looks at her life experience both as a daughter and a mother. In such cases, the focus of the narrative shifts from the relationship between herself and her mother to the development of the narrator as a person.

The comparison between Finnish and Estonian stories reveals that Finnish families tended to remain silent on difficult circumstances, whereas Estonian narratives emphasized the parents’ ability to explain difficult situations to children. Comparing the stories also pointed to a change in the family structure and functions in the 20^th century: the pre-war family model included the parents and the children, while in wartime and post-war families, the mother had to take on the father’s former responsibilities. In Finnish research, this is addressed through the lens of trauma studies (e.g., the aggressiveness of the exhausted single mother towards her children). In Estonia, the issue is seen through the framework of the impact of political repressions on a person’s life. However, the trauma discourse is also evident in Estonian narratives. That is, if the narrators themselves have used corporal punishment on their own children. In such cases, the focus is not so much on the events that took place as on a perception of changing values.

 

Tiiu Jaago (b. 1960), PhD, Associate Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tiiu.jaago@ut.ee

Keywords: life after death, categories of time, travels in the land of the dead, religious tales

The article presents a comparative historical analysis of fairy tales of the Friends in Life and Death (ATU/SUS 470) plot type, their features and distribution among Belarusians, Russians and Estonians. In the Estonian and Belarusian material, stories of this type are in some cases contaminated with the ATU 470A and 471A types.

We examine differences in the flow of time in the real world and other worlds, and consider the features of the chronotope of fairy tales and the organization of artistic space within them, as well as ways of transition and communication between the worlds.

According to the most common plot of ATU/SUS 470 fairy tales, two friends promise to be guests at each other’s weddings. One of them dies and the living friend invites the dead one to his wedding; however, after receiving a counter-invitation, he finds himself in another world. There he either travels with the deceased friend through his world, where he sees various curiosities and paradoxes, or celebrates at the wedding of the deceased friend. It seems to the living person that he spent several hours with the deceased friend (or with his brother or father in some Estonian versions), but when he returns to his own world, he discovers that decades or centuries have passed on Earth. Most often, after this discovery, the hero dies and turns to dust, but there are some rare Estonian versions where he miraculously restores ­himself and his bride to their original state (and age), after which they get married again.

 

Alena Boganeva (b. 1964), PhD, Yakub Kolas Institute of Linguistics of the Center for the Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Head of the Department of Ethnolinguistics (Surhanava 1, Corpus 2, 220072 Minsk, Belarus), elboganeva@gmail.com

Mare Kõiva (b. 1954), PhD, Estonian Literary Museum, Lead Research Fellow of the Department of Folkloristics, acting head of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian ­Studies (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), mare@folklore.ee

Keywords: rhetoric, „The Anxiety of Influence”, irony, metonymy, metaphor, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man

The inspiration for this article came from Jüri Talvet’s observation that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s „Faust” and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald’s „Kalevipoeg” show some remarkable similarities in their philosophical structure and plot. This article therefore aims to compare these two masterpieces by using Harold Bloom’s and Paul de Man’s understanding of tropes. While allusion and intertextuality studies typically focus on a limited number of similarities between two texts, Bloom’s anxiety of influence theory helps to apprehend both texts as a whole. This objective is achievable with two constraints. Firstly, making such a comparison requires us to widen our understanding of tropes. In this analysis, tropes do not signify limited transfers of meaning (from one word to another), but the full transformation of a text’s meaning. The background to this article lies in the hypothesis that large chunks of ­„Kalevipoeg” can be read as tropes that are derived from the verses of „Faust”. ­Secondly, this kind of analysis cannot focus on the style, genre or semantic nuances of both works, but only on the general picture: the stories and their protagonists. The anxiety of influence theory shows that the change of meaning from one work to another can be described by means of two kinds of tropes: limiting and repeating ones. In this article, the limiting tropes of irony, metonymy and metaphor can be used to depict the change of meaning from „Faust” to „Kalevipoeg”. The story of an intellectual who makes a pact with the devil, seeks absolute love and wishes to accomplish godly deeds becomes a story of a mythically strong hero who has no choice, never finds true love and achieves predestined greatness. According to Bloom, this is only half of the comparison. In a follow-up article, I will show how the repeating tropes of synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis can be used to demonstrate that the fate of these different protagonists is in fact somewhat similar.

 

Tõnis Parksepp (b. 1987), MA, freelance dramatist; University of Tartu, doctoral student at the Institute of Cultural Research (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tonisparksepp@gmail.com

Keywords: semantic types, polysemy, lexicography, lexicology, perception adjectives, corpus linguistics, Estonian

The article aims to identify the patterns of systematic polysemy for Estonian tactile adjectives using semantic types and corpus data. It also discusses the presentation of semantic patterns in a dictionary. This will help to provide a theoretical basis for lexicographers and to align the presentation of adjective polysemy in dictionaries. The dataset for the study consists of 265 tactile adjectives.

The corpus manager and text analysis software Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004, 2014) is used for corpus context analysis. The program allows to observe the collocations of a word based on various statistics, to generate word sketches, and to study words used in similar contexts by means of the thesaurus function. To find the patterns, semantic types are assigned to meanings and similarities are searched between meaning shifts. For tagging the adjective meanings, the semantic types developed to describe Estonian (polysemous) adjectives (Tuulik 2014; Tuulik, Langemets 2016) are used, and for noun meanings, the semantic types of the Estonian noun developed by Margit Langemets (2010) are used. The research method used for analyzing polysemy in the article is of a practical nature and has grown out of real-life lexicographical work.

A total of 13 polysemy patterns emerged in the tactile adjective group. The most common shift was from tactile characteristics to psychological characteristics (in the sense structure of 43 words). Shifts could be observed from pleasant tactile sensations to positive mental characteristics (e.g pehme padi ‘soft pillow’, pehme loomuga ‘soft-natured’) and from unpleasant touch experience to mentally unpleasant experience (okkaline roos ‘thorny rose’, okkaline iseloom ‘thorny character’). The study of systematic polysemy points to a strong link between the domains of tactile touch and feelings.

The lexicographic presentation of polysemous patterns varied. The pattern was represented as: 1) two distinct primary meanings; 2) primary meaning and submeaning(s); 3) a common aggregate meaning; 4) systematic polysemy that appeared in the corpus but was not presented. The analysis showed that lexicographers may perceive and present one and the same pattern in different ways; therefore, familiarity with polysemy patterns associated with the respective semantic type could contribute to a more systematic presentation.

 

Maria Tuulik (b. 1985), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer (Roosi­krantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), maria.tuulik@eki.ee

Keywords: usage-based linguistics, corpus linguistics, language planning, corpus planning, verb government, Estonian

For over a century, attempts have been made in Estonian language planning to standardize the oblique case selection of verbs (traditionally: verb government), but variation persists in actual language use. In this paper we look at the case selection patterns of a number of verbs, with which variation is said to occur without any semantic difference.

We look at the historical process of how corpus planning has decided on the “right” case-selection and compare it to actual language use from 1900–1939 and 2019–2021. Our analysis shows that variation is still present in the 2019–2021 data. A detailed multifactorial analysis of variation between comitative or allative marking of the oblique argument of the verb sarnanema ‘to resemble’ reveals that the most important factor affecting the choice between the two is in fact semantic, which has remained unnoticed by language planners for over a century. Language planners should therefore systematically take into account the results of linguistic research (based on actual language use), and linguists, in turn, should pay attention to variations in Standard Estonian in order to provide new input for language planners.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher, Language Planner (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Liina Lindström (b. 1973), PhD, University of Tartu, Professor of Modern Estonian Lan­guage (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), liina.lindstrom@ut.ee

Keywords: autobiographical writings, modernity, nature, vernacular literarcy

The article looks at nature references in texts written in the 1890s by two men born in the middle of the 19^th century: namely, the autobiographical writings of farmer and school teacher Paulus Paurmann (1850–1903), and the diary of miller Märt Siipsen (1846–1916). Paurmann and Siipsen can be called vernacular literati – despite their poor education they were eager to participate in the modern literary sphere as both readers and writers. Both men depended on nature in their livelihood – this combined with their interest in contemporary literary matters makes them good examples of the spread of modern ideas about nature among the lower social classes. 

The influence of these ideas can manifest in at least three different ways: (1) as an interest in modern scientific ideas; (2) as a wish to shape nature – plant new species, apply new technologies; (3) by using nature (as well as poetic language stemming from nature) to express one’s identity, to position oneself with respect to modern identity markers.

In Siipsen’s text we can see two different ways of positioning oneself in relation to nature: passive (religious) and active (practical). In some passages he states that everything which happens in nature depends on God, whereas in others he describes attempts at designing his surroundings by adding new plants and birds. The relationship between the two remains ambiguous. 

Paurmann has written two autobiographies. The earlier one uses a lot of descriptions of and metaphorical references to nature and its composition adheres to the poetics of sentimental chapbooks; the latter one is written in plain language and barely mentions nature at all. That is to say, references to nature in his writings depend on the chosen poetic language.

In conclusion, we can see that both men have incorporated into their writings certain new ideas about nature that were disseminated in the written discourse at the time. Siipsen mostly describes new ways of designing one’s farmyard, whereas Paurmann turns to poetic uses of nature.

 

Katre Kikas (b. 1981), MA, Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folklore Studies, Researcher (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), katre.kikas@folklore.ee

Keywords: 21st century literature, eco-fiction, citizen science, ornithology

The article compares birdwatchers’ experience of nature with the natural environment as conveyed in literary fiction. The source materials comprise, first of all, interviews conducted with (mostly amateur) Estonian birdwatchers and, secondly, contemporary Estonian and Swedish literary fiction: Maarja Pärtna’s prose poetry collection “The Living City” (Elav linn, 2022), Andrus Kivirähk’s book “Flight to the Moon” (Lend Kuule, 2022), Tõnis Tootsen’s novel “Pâté of the Apes: One Primate’s Thoughts and Memories” (Ahvide pasteet, 2022) and Kerstin Ekman’s novel “The Wolf Run” (Löpa varg, 2021; Estonian translation 2022). The focus is on whether and how the concerns of nature observers relate to anxiety about changes in the natural environment as expressed in contemporary literature. Amateur environmental ­science projects aim to draw attention to concerns about the natural environment and climate change and thereby strive for a smaller personal environmental impact. Eco-fiction, in turn, puts environmental issues into words, setting them into a fathomable, although perhaps altogether unexpected scale: hence, eco-prose and -poesy are essential ways of perceiving that also serve to interpret the ongoing changes.

Environment-oriented literary culture has responded to issues with the natural environment before. Now, too, it can be concluded that environmental concerns have made a forceful entry into literature. All of the above-mentioned authors have found their unique way of conceptualizing our home in an era of environmental crises. Their recently published works tell stories about our surroundings and interpret the present situation; they discuss the anthropocentric viewpoint or depict the human focus from an unexpected perspective; they draw attention to our alien­ation from nature; they reposition the reader and thereby seek solutions to environmental issues. Among other things, they highlight environmentally friendly ways of living and experiencing the world or look at the world through non-human eyes, thus bringing the narrator closer to other forms of being. The writers share with birdwatchers the post-humanist idea of the equality of species as well as a sharp eye for their subject.

 

Elle-Mari Talivee (b. 1974), PhD, Estonian Academy of Sciences, Under and Tuglas ­Literature Centre, Senior Researcher (Väikese Illimari 12, 11623 Tallinn); Tallinn University, Research Fellow, ellemari@utkk.ee

Keywords: Estonian literature, curricula, literary education, Soviet schools, ideology, identity

The article looks at changes in the literature curriculum throughout the Soviet occupation. It discusses the content of the curricula, the ideological context, as well as the proportion of the curriculum dedicated to literary education. Due to the sheer volume of the material available, the article limits itself to mapping out the topic: whether and how the ideological emphases evolved during different periods (Stalinism, the Khrushchev Thaw, the Era of Stagnation); the ratio of Russian (Soviet) to Estonian authors covered in the literary curriculum; the educational system paradoxes involved in literature as a school subject that allows for the expression of certain views.

Three observations are drawn in conclusion.

Firstly, in ideological and party-led education, literature lessons held a special place in Soviet schools. Literature – alongside history – was considered the most important subject for shaping the students’ views.

Secondly, a remarkable portion of the curriculum was allotted to literary education conceived in this manner, to make sure that the mandated authors could be discussed in depth. Without doubt, this involved communist instruction – the intensity of which varied greatly depending on the head of school, the teachers and the decade at hand. However, Estonian literature, especially the literary classics, could still be covered extensively alongside the ideological instruction.

Thirdly, literature lessons evolved into a sphere for the discussion of Estonian nationhood, owing to the fact that the accepted authors represented seminal texts, the examination of which made it possible to also talk about Estonian literary history. In the history of teaching and studying Estonian literature, the Soviet era was particularly notable for its emphasis on literary classics, which undeniably played a crucial role in the preservation of national identity.

The article also notes that Estonian literature largely lost this role in general education schools after Estonia regained its independence.

 

Maarja Vaino (b. 1976), PhD, literary scholar and Director of Tallinn Literary Centre ­(Koidula 12a, 10125 Tallinn), maarja.vaino@gmail.com

Keywords: 1960 Song Festival, exile, Eduard Tubin, cultural relations, splitted society, Soviet influence measures

Khrushchev’s policy of building cultural relations with the West opened up a possibility for communication between Estonians home and abroad in the late 1950s. From the Soviet perspective, this contact was aimed at weakening the anti-Soviet attitudes of refugee organizations and splitting the community that fled to the West. As a consequence of the non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, a portion of the community was determined not to visit their homeland until it was free. Another part, however, did not see much wrong with a trip to their native land. The disagreements and internal divisions of the community inspired the Soviet officials to influence the refugees in different ways. Making use of people’s homesickness and their wish to see friends and family, a number of people were selected for positive inclusion through cultural contact and other means in order to encourage other refugees to follow their example and change their behaviour and attitudes. The 1960 Song Festival seemed like a perfect opportunity to invite people to visit their homeland. The Festival was also meant to coax the acclaimed conductor and composer Eduard Tubin to visit Estonia.

However, the Song Festival failed to activate communication to the desired degree and Tubin also refused to participate. The manipulation of Tubin, which focused on his professional motivation and connections with former colleagues and acquain­tances, finally bore fruit in December 1961. The Ministry of State Security of the Estonian SSR considered this a breakthrough in changing the attitudes of the exiles, as the “emigrant leaders” reacted to Tubin’s visit with calls to refrain from visiting Estonia, which in turn sowed resentment among those who were looking forward to visiting their homeland and deepened internal contradictions. The debate that erupted around attending the Song Festival in Tallinn as well as Tubin’s trip to Estonia brought into view the fragmentation of the Estonian diaspora, the existential concerns of people living in exile that the Soviet authorities deliberately amplified in order to use them for their benefit through various influence operations.

 

Aigi Rahi-Tamm (b. 1965), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of History and Archaeology, Professor of Archival Studies (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), aigi.rahi-tamm@ut.ee

Keywords: family relationships, life narrative, life writing, personal experience stories, trauma

Recent public debates on family-related issues (What constitutes a traditional family? How widespread is domestic violence? What is the purpose of child protective services?) prompted an examination of these themes from the perspective of people’s personal experience. The article is based on manuscripts of life narratives obtained from the collection of Estonian Life Histories in the Estonian Cultural History Archives (EKM EKLA, f 350). The narratives were written down between 1989 and 2017 and provide a glimpse into the societal changes that took place between the 1930s and the early 21^st century. The favoured narrative techniques and the ways these changed at the end of the 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century also become apparent. The article compares Estonian narratives with Finnish ones. The comparison is aided by similar collection methods used both for Estonian and Finnish stories – these are thematic narratives archived by volunteer correspondents. More specifically, the focus is on generational conflicts present in life narratives.

Family relationships (including conflicts) are revealed in the narratives through the lens chosen by the narrator. It seems that family relationships were overshadowed by political issues in Estonian life stories narrated in the 1990s: the narrators concentrated on descriptions of people’s relationship with the Soviet power, including repressive experiences. In the early 2000s, this perspective receded, allowing more space for descriptions of relationships within the family. Depictions of post-war childhood sometimes suggest that children who grew up separately from their mother due to economic, social or other reasons never developed a close bond with her. In narratives collected in 2017, the narrator often looks at her life experience both as a daughter and a mother. In such cases, the focus of the narrative shifts from the relationship between herself and her mother to the development of the narrator as a person.

The comparison between Finnish and Estonian stories reveals that Finnish families tended to remain silent on difficult circumstances, whereas Estonian narratives emphasized the parents’ ability to explain difficult situations to children. Comparing the stories also pointed to a change in the family structure and functions in the 20^th century: the pre-war family model included the parents and the children, while in wartime and post-war families, the mother had to take on the father’s former responsibilities. In Finnish research, this is addressed through the lens of trauma studies (e.g., the aggressiveness of the exhausted single mother towards her children). In Estonia, the issue is seen through the framework of the impact of political repressions on a person’s life. However, the trauma discourse is also evident in Estonian narratives. That is, if the narrators themselves have used corporal punishment on their own children. In such cases, the focus is not so much on the events that took place as on a perception of changing values.

 

Tiiu Jaago (b. 1960), PhD, Associate Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tiiu.jaago@ut.ee

Keywords: life after death, categories of time, travels in the land of the dead, religious tales

The article presents a comparative historical analysis of fairy tales of the Friends in Life and Death (ATU/SUS 470) plot type, their features and distribution among Belarusians, Russians and Estonians. In the Estonian and Belarusian material, stories of this type are in some cases contaminated with the ATU 470A and 471A types.

We examine differences in the flow of time in the real world and other worlds, and consider the features of the chronotope of fairy tales and the organization of artistic space within them, as well as ways of transition and communication between the worlds.

According to the most common plot of ATU/SUS 470 fairy tales, two friends promise to be guests at each other’s weddings. One of them dies and the living friend invites the dead one to his wedding; however, after receiving a counter-invitation, he finds himself in another world. There he either travels with the deceased friend through his world, where he sees various curiosities and paradoxes, or celebrates at the wedding of the deceased friend. It seems to the living person that he spent several hours with the deceased friend (or with his brother or father in some Estonian versions), but when he returns to his own world, he discovers that decades or centuries have passed on Earth. Most often, after this discovery, the hero dies and turns to dust, but there are some rare Estonian versions where he miraculously restores ­himself and his bride to their original state (and age), after which they get married again.

 

Alena Boganeva (b. 1964), PhD, Yakub Kolas Institute of Linguistics of the Center for the Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Head of the Department of Ethnolinguistics (Surhanava 1, Corpus 2, 220072 Minsk, Belarus), elboganeva@gmail.com

Mare Kõiva (b. 1954), PhD, Estonian Literary Museum, Lead Research Fellow of the Department of Folkloristics, acting head of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian ­Studies (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), mare@folklore.ee

Keywords: rhetoric, „The Anxiety of Influence”, irony, metonymy, metaphor, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man

The inspiration for this article came from Jüri Talvet’s observation that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s „Faust” and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald’s „Kalevipoeg” show some remarkable similarities in their philosophical structure and plot. This article therefore aims to compare these two masterpieces by using Harold Bloom’s and Paul de Man’s understanding of tropes. While allusion and intertextuality studies typically focus on a limited number of similarities between two texts, Bloom’s anxiety of influence theory helps to apprehend both texts as a whole. This objective is achievable with two constraints. Firstly, making such a comparison requires us to widen our understanding of tropes. In this analysis, tropes do not signify limited transfers of meaning (from one word to another), but the full transformation of a text’s meaning. The background to this article lies in the hypothesis that large chunks of ­„Kalevipoeg” can be read as tropes that are derived from the verses of „Faust”. ­Secondly, this kind of analysis cannot focus on the style, genre or semantic nuances of both works, but only on the general picture: the stories and their protagonists. The anxiety of influence theory shows that the change of meaning from one work to another can be described by means of two kinds of tropes: limiting and repeating ones. In this article, the limiting tropes of irony, metonymy and metaphor can be used to depict the change of meaning from „Faust” to „Kalevipoeg”. The story of an intellectual who makes a pact with the devil, seeks absolute love and wishes to accomplish godly deeds becomes a story of a mythically strong hero who has no choice, never finds true love and achieves predestined greatness. According to Bloom, this is only half of the comparison. In a follow-up article, I will show how the repeating tropes of synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis can be used to demonstrate that the fate of these different protagonists is in fact somewhat similar.

 

Tõnis Parksepp (b. 1987), MA, freelance dramatist; University of Tartu, doctoral student at the Institute of Cultural Research (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tonisparksepp@gmail.com

Keywords: semantic types, polysemy, lexicography, lexicology, perception adjectives, corpus linguistics, Estonian

The article aims to identify the patterns of systematic polysemy for Estonian tactile adjectives using semantic types and corpus data. It also discusses the presentation of semantic patterns in a dictionary. This will help to provide a theoretical basis for lexicographers and to align the presentation of adjective polysemy in dictionaries. The dataset for the study consists of 265 tactile adjectives.

The corpus manager and text analysis software Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004, 2014) is used for corpus context analysis. The program allows to observe the collocations of a word based on various statistics, to generate word sketches, and to study words used in similar contexts by means of the thesaurus function. To find the patterns, semantic types are assigned to meanings and similarities are searched between meaning shifts. For tagging the adjective meanings, the semantic types developed to describe Estonian (polysemous) adjectives (Tuulik 2014; Tuulik, Langemets 2016) are used, and for noun meanings, the semantic types of the Estonian noun developed by Margit Langemets (2010) are used. The research method used for analyzing polysemy in the article is of a practical nature and has grown out of real-life lexicographical work.

A total of 13 polysemy patterns emerged in the tactile adjective group. The most common shift was from tactile characteristics to psychological characteristics (in the sense structure of 43 words). Shifts could be observed from pleasant tactile sensations to positive mental characteristics (e.g pehme padi ‘soft pillow’, pehme loomuga ‘soft-natured’) and from unpleasant touch experience to mentally unpleasant experience (okkaline roos ‘thorny rose’, okkaline iseloom ‘thorny character’). The study of systematic polysemy points to a strong link between the domains of tactile touch and feelings.

The lexicographic presentation of polysemous patterns varied. The pattern was represented as: 1) two distinct primary meanings; 2) primary meaning and submeaning(s); 3) a common aggregate meaning; 4) systematic polysemy that appeared in the corpus but was not presented. The analysis showed that lexicographers may perceive and present one and the same pattern in different ways; therefore, familiarity with polysemy patterns associated with the respective semantic type could contribute to a more systematic presentation.

 

Maria Tuulik (b. 1985), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer (Roosi­krantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), maria.tuulik@eki.ee

Keywords: usage-based linguistics, corpus linguistics, language planning, corpus planning, verb government, Estonian

For over a century, attempts have been made in Estonian language planning to standardize the oblique case selection of verbs (traditionally: verb government), but variation persists in actual language use. In this paper we look at the case selection patterns of a number of verbs, with which variation is said to occur without any semantic difference.

We look at the historical process of how corpus planning has decided on the “right” case-selection and compare it to actual language use from 1900–1939 and 2019–2021. Our analysis shows that variation is still present in the 2019–2021 data. A detailed multifactorial analysis of variation between comitative or allative marking of the oblique argument of the verb sarnanema ‘to resemble’ reveals that the most important factor affecting the choice between the two is in fact semantic, which has remained unnoticed by language planners for over a century. Language planners should therefore systematically take into account the results of linguistic research (based on actual language use), and linguists, in turn, should pay attention to variations in Standard Estonian in order to provide new input for language planners.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher, Language Planner (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Liina Lindström (b. 1973), PhD, University of Tartu, Professor of Modern Estonian Lan­guage (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), liina.lindstrom@ut.ee

Keywords: autobiographical writings, modernity, nature, vernacular literarcy

The article looks at nature references in texts written in the 1890s by two men born in the middle of the 19^th century: namely, the autobiographical writings of farmer and school teacher Paulus Paurmann (1850–1903), and the diary of miller Märt Siipsen (1846–1916). Paurmann and Siipsen can be called vernacular literati – despite their poor education they were eager to participate in the modern literary sphere as both readers and writers. Both men depended on nature in their livelihood – this combined with their interest in contemporary literary matters makes them good examples of the spread of modern ideas about nature among the lower social classes. 

The influence of these ideas can manifest in at least three different ways: (1) as an interest in modern scientific ideas; (2) as a wish to shape nature – plant new species, apply new technologies; (3) by using nature (as well as poetic language stemming from nature) to express one’s identity, to position oneself with respect to modern identity markers.

In Siipsen’s text we can see two different ways of positioning oneself in relation to nature: passive (religious) and active (practical). In some passages he states that everything which happens in nature depends on God, whereas in others he describes attempts at designing his surroundings by adding new plants and birds. The relationship between the two remains ambiguous. 

Paurmann has written two autobiographies. The earlier one uses a lot of descriptions of and metaphorical references to nature and its composition adheres to the poetics of sentimental chapbooks; the latter one is written in plain language and barely mentions nature at all. That is to say, references to nature in his writings depend on the chosen poetic language.

In conclusion, we can see that both men have incorporated into their writings certain new ideas about nature that were disseminated in the written discourse at the time. Siipsen mostly describes new ways of designing one’s farmyard, whereas Paurmann turns to poetic uses of nature.

 

Katre Kikas (b. 1981), MA, Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folklore Studies, Researcher (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), katre.kikas@folklore.ee

Keywords: 21st century literature, eco-fiction, citizen science, ornithology

The article compares birdwatchers’ experience of nature with the natural environment as conveyed in literary fiction. The source materials comprise, first of all, interviews conducted with (mostly amateur) Estonian birdwatchers and, secondly, contemporary Estonian and Swedish literary fiction: Maarja Pärtna’s prose poetry collection “The Living City” (Elav linn, 2022), Andrus Kivirähk’s book “Flight to the Moon” (Lend Kuule, 2022), Tõnis Tootsen’s novel “Pâté of the Apes: One Primate’s Thoughts and Memories” (Ahvide pasteet, 2022) and Kerstin Ekman’s novel “The Wolf Run” (Löpa varg, 2021; Estonian translation 2022). The focus is on whether and how the concerns of nature observers relate to anxiety about changes in the natural environment as expressed in contemporary literature. Amateur environmental ­science projects aim to draw attention to concerns about the natural environment and climate change and thereby strive for a smaller personal environmental impact. Eco-fiction, in turn, puts environmental issues into words, setting them into a fathomable, although perhaps altogether unexpected scale: hence, eco-prose and -poesy are essential ways of perceiving that also serve to interpret the ongoing changes.

Environment-oriented literary culture has responded to issues with the natural environment before. Now, too, it can be concluded that environmental concerns have made a forceful entry into literature. All of the above-mentioned authors have found their unique way of conceptualizing our home in an era of environmental crises. Their recently published works tell stories about our surroundings and interpret the present situation; they discuss the anthropocentric viewpoint or depict the human focus from an unexpected perspective; they draw attention to our alien­ation from nature; they reposition the reader and thereby seek solutions to environmental issues. Among other things, they highlight environmentally friendly ways of living and experiencing the world or look at the world through non-human eyes, thus bringing the narrator closer to other forms of being. The writers share with birdwatchers the post-humanist idea of the equality of species as well as a sharp eye for their subject.

 

Elle-Mari Talivee (b. 1974), PhD, Estonian Academy of Sciences, Under and Tuglas ­Literature Centre, Senior Researcher (Väikese Illimari 12, 11623 Tallinn); Tallinn University, Research Fellow, ellemari@utkk.ee

Keywords: Estonian literature, curricula, literary education, Soviet schools, ideology, identity

The article looks at changes in the literature curriculum throughout the Soviet occupation. It discusses the content of the curricula, the ideological context, as well as the proportion of the curriculum dedicated to literary education. Due to the sheer volume of the material available, the article limits itself to mapping out the topic: whether and how the ideological emphases evolved during different periods (Stalinism, the Khrushchev Thaw, the Era of Stagnation); the ratio of Russian (Soviet) to Estonian authors covered in the literary curriculum; the educational system paradoxes involved in literature as a school subject that allows for the expression of certain views.

Three observations are drawn in conclusion.

Firstly, in ideological and party-led education, literature lessons held a special place in Soviet schools. Literature – alongside history – was considered the most important subject for shaping the students’ views.

Secondly, a remarkable portion of the curriculum was allotted to literary education conceived in this manner, to make sure that the mandated authors could be discussed in depth. Without doubt, this involved communist instruction – the intensity of which varied greatly depending on the head of school, the teachers and the decade at hand. However, Estonian literature, especially the literary classics, could still be covered extensively alongside the ideological instruction.

Thirdly, literature lessons evolved into a sphere for the discussion of Estonian nationhood, owing to the fact that the accepted authors represented seminal texts, the examination of which made it possible to also talk about Estonian literary history. In the history of teaching and studying Estonian literature, the Soviet era was particularly notable for its emphasis on literary classics, which undeniably played a crucial role in the preservation of national identity.

The article also notes that Estonian literature largely lost this role in general education schools after Estonia regained its independence.

 

Maarja Vaino (b. 1976), PhD, literary scholar and Director of Tallinn Literary Centre ­(Koidula 12a, 10125 Tallinn), maarja.vaino@gmail.com

Keywords: 1960 Song Festival, exile, Eduard Tubin, cultural relations, splitted society, Soviet influence measures

Khrushchev’s policy of building cultural relations with the West opened up a possibility for communication between Estonians home and abroad in the late 1950s. From the Soviet perspective, this contact was aimed at weakening the anti-Soviet attitudes of refugee organizations and splitting the community that fled to the West. As a consequence of the non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, a portion of the community was determined not to visit their homeland until it was free. Another part, however, did not see much wrong with a trip to their native land. The disagreements and internal divisions of the community inspired the Soviet officials to influence the refugees in different ways. Making use of people’s homesickness and their wish to see friends and family, a number of people were selected for positive inclusion through cultural contact and other means in order to encourage other refugees to follow their example and change their behaviour and attitudes. The 1960 Song Festival seemed like a perfect opportunity to invite people to visit their homeland. The Festival was also meant to coax the acclaimed conductor and composer Eduard Tubin to visit Estonia.

However, the Song Festival failed to activate communication to the desired degree and Tubin also refused to participate. The manipulation of Tubin, which focused on his professional motivation and connections with former colleagues and acquain­tances, finally bore fruit in December 1961. The Ministry of State Security of the Estonian SSR considered this a breakthrough in changing the attitudes of the exiles, as the “emigrant leaders” reacted to Tubin’s visit with calls to refrain from visiting Estonia, which in turn sowed resentment among those who were looking forward to visiting their homeland and deepened internal contradictions. The debate that erupted around attending the Song Festival in Tallinn as well as Tubin’s trip to Estonia brought into view the fragmentation of the Estonian diaspora, the existential concerns of people living in exile that the Soviet authorities deliberately amplified in order to use them for their benefit through various influence operations.

 

Aigi Rahi-Tamm (b. 1965), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of History and Archaeology, Professor of Archival Studies (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), aigi.rahi-tamm@ut.ee

Keywords: family relationships, life narrative, life writing, personal experience stories, trauma

Recent public debates on family-related issues (What constitutes a traditional family? How widespread is domestic violence? What is the purpose of child protective services?) prompted an examination of these themes from the perspective of people’s personal experience. The article is based on manuscripts of life narratives obtained from the collection of Estonian Life Histories in the Estonian Cultural History Archives (EKM EKLA, f 350). The narratives were written down between 1989 and 2017 and provide a glimpse into the societal changes that took place between the 1930s and the early 21^st century. The favoured narrative techniques and the ways these changed at the end of the 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century also become apparent. The article compares Estonian narratives with Finnish ones. The comparison is aided by similar collection methods used both for Estonian and Finnish stories – these are thematic narratives archived by volunteer correspondents. More specifically, the focus is on generational conflicts present in life narratives.

Family relationships (including conflicts) are revealed in the narratives through the lens chosen by the narrator. It seems that family relationships were overshadowed by political issues in Estonian life stories narrated in the 1990s: the narrators concentrated on descriptions of people’s relationship with the Soviet power, including repressive experiences. In the early 2000s, this perspective receded, allowing more space for descriptions of relationships within the family. Depictions of post-war childhood sometimes suggest that children who grew up separately from their mother due to economic, social or other reasons never developed a close bond with her. In narratives collected in 2017, the narrator often looks at her life experience both as a daughter and a mother. In such cases, the focus of the narrative shifts from the relationship between herself and her mother to the development of the narrator as a person.

The comparison between Finnish and Estonian stories reveals that Finnish families tended to remain silent on difficult circumstances, whereas Estonian narratives emphasized the parents’ ability to explain difficult situations to children. Comparing the stories also pointed to a change in the family structure and functions in the 20^th century: the pre-war family model included the parents and the children, while in wartime and post-war families, the mother had to take on the father’s former responsibilities. In Finnish research, this is addressed through the lens of trauma studies (e.g., the aggressiveness of the exhausted single mother towards her children). In Estonia, the issue is seen through the framework of the impact of political repressions on a person’s life. However, the trauma discourse is also evident in Estonian narratives. That is, if the narrators themselves have used corporal punishment on their own children. In such cases, the focus is not so much on the events that took place as on a perception of changing values.

 

Tiiu Jaago (b. 1960), PhD, Associate Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tiiu.jaago@ut.ee

Keywords: life after death, categories of time, travels in the land of the dead, religious tales

The article presents a comparative historical analysis of fairy tales of the Friends in Life and Death (ATU/SUS 470) plot type, their features and distribution among Belarusians, Russians and Estonians. In the Estonian and Belarusian material, stories of this type are in some cases contaminated with the ATU 470A and 471A types.

We examine differences in the flow of time in the real world and other worlds, and consider the features of the chronotope of fairy tales and the organization of artistic space within them, as well as ways of transition and communication between the worlds.

According to the most common plot of ATU/SUS 470 fairy tales, two friends promise to be guests at each other’s weddings. One of them dies and the living friend invites the dead one to his wedding; however, after receiving a counter-invitation, he finds himself in another world. There he either travels with the deceased friend through his world, where he sees various curiosities and paradoxes, or celebrates at the wedding of the deceased friend. It seems to the living person that he spent several hours with the deceased friend (or with his brother or father in some Estonian versions), but when he returns to his own world, he discovers that decades or centuries have passed on Earth. Most often, after this discovery, the hero dies and turns to dust, but there are some rare Estonian versions where he miraculously restores ­himself and his bride to their original state (and age), after which they get married again.

 

Alena Boganeva (b. 1964), PhD, Yakub Kolas Institute of Linguistics of the Center for the Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Head of the Department of Ethnolinguistics (Surhanava 1, Corpus 2, 220072 Minsk, Belarus), elboganeva@gmail.com

Mare Kõiva (b. 1954), PhD, Estonian Literary Museum, Lead Research Fellow of the Department of Folkloristics, acting head of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian ­Studies (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), mare@folklore.ee

Keywords: rhetoric, „The Anxiety of Influence”, irony, metonymy, metaphor, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man

The inspiration for this article came from Jüri Talvet’s observation that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s „Faust” and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald’s „Kalevipoeg” show some remarkable similarities in their philosophical structure and plot. This article therefore aims to compare these two masterpieces by using Harold Bloom’s and Paul de Man’s understanding of tropes. While allusion and intertextuality studies typically focus on a limited number of similarities between two texts, Bloom’s anxiety of influence theory helps to apprehend both texts as a whole. This objective is achievable with two constraints. Firstly, making such a comparison requires us to widen our understanding of tropes. In this analysis, tropes do not signify limited transfers of meaning (from one word to another), but the full transformation of a text’s meaning. The background to this article lies in the hypothesis that large chunks of ­„Kalevipoeg” can be read as tropes that are derived from the verses of „Faust”. ­Secondly, this kind of analysis cannot focus on the style, genre or semantic nuances of both works, but only on the general picture: the stories and their protagonists. The anxiety of influence theory shows that the change of meaning from one work to another can be described by means of two kinds of tropes: limiting and repeating ones. In this article, the limiting tropes of irony, metonymy and metaphor can be used to depict the change of meaning from „Faust” to „Kalevipoeg”. The story of an intellectual who makes a pact with the devil, seeks absolute love and wishes to accomplish godly deeds becomes a story of a mythically strong hero who has no choice, never finds true love and achieves predestined greatness. According to Bloom, this is only half of the comparison. In a follow-up article, I will show how the repeating tropes of synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis can be used to demonstrate that the fate of these different protagonists is in fact somewhat similar.

 

Tõnis Parksepp (b. 1987), MA, freelance dramatist; University of Tartu, doctoral student at the Institute of Cultural Research (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tonisparksepp@gmail.com

Keywords: semantic types, polysemy, lexicography, lexicology, perception adjectives, corpus linguistics, Estonian

The article aims to identify the patterns of systematic polysemy for Estonian tactile adjectives using semantic types and corpus data. It also discusses the presentation of semantic patterns in a dictionary. This will help to provide a theoretical basis for lexicographers and to align the presentation of adjective polysemy in dictionaries. The dataset for the study consists of 265 tactile adjectives.

The corpus manager and text analysis software Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004, 2014) is used for corpus context analysis. The program allows to observe the collocations of a word based on various statistics, to generate word sketches, and to study words used in similar contexts by means of the thesaurus function. To find the patterns, semantic types are assigned to meanings and similarities are searched between meaning shifts. For tagging the adjective meanings, the semantic types developed to describe Estonian (polysemous) adjectives (Tuulik 2014; Tuulik, Langemets 2016) are used, and for noun meanings, the semantic types of the Estonian noun developed by Margit Langemets (2010) are used. The research method used for analyzing polysemy in the article is of a practical nature and has grown out of real-life lexicographical work.

A total of 13 polysemy patterns emerged in the tactile adjective group. The most common shift was from tactile characteristics to psychological characteristics (in the sense structure of 43 words). Shifts could be observed from pleasant tactile sensations to positive mental characteristics (e.g pehme padi ‘soft pillow’, pehme loomuga ‘soft-natured’) and from unpleasant touch experience to mentally unpleasant experience (okkaline roos ‘thorny rose’, okkaline iseloom ‘thorny character’). The study of systematic polysemy points to a strong link between the domains of tactile touch and feelings.

The lexicographic presentation of polysemous patterns varied. The pattern was represented as: 1) two distinct primary meanings; 2) primary meaning and submeaning(s); 3) a common aggregate meaning; 4) systematic polysemy that appeared in the corpus but was not presented. The analysis showed that lexicographers may perceive and present one and the same pattern in different ways; therefore, familiarity with polysemy patterns associated with the respective semantic type could contribute to a more systematic presentation.

 

Maria Tuulik (b. 1985), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer (Roosi­krantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), maria.tuulik@eki.ee

Keywords: usage-based linguistics, corpus linguistics, language planning, corpus planning, verb government, Estonian

For over a century, attempts have been made in Estonian language planning to standardize the oblique case selection of verbs (traditionally: verb government), but variation persists in actual language use. In this paper we look at the case selection patterns of a number of verbs, with which variation is said to occur without any semantic difference.

We look at the historical process of how corpus planning has decided on the “right” case-selection and compare it to actual language use from 1900–1939 and 2019–2021. Our analysis shows that variation is still present in the 2019–2021 data. A detailed multifactorial analysis of variation between comitative or allative marking of the oblique argument of the verb sarnanema ‘to resemble’ reveals that the most important factor affecting the choice between the two is in fact semantic, which has remained unnoticed by language planners for over a century. Language planners should therefore systematically take into account the results of linguistic research (based on actual language use), and linguists, in turn, should pay attention to variations in Standard Estonian in order to provide new input for language planners.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher, Language Planner (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Liina Lindström (b. 1973), PhD, University of Tartu, Professor of Modern Estonian Lan­guage (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), liina.lindstrom@ut.ee

Keywords: autobiographical writings, modernity, nature, vernacular literarcy

The article looks at nature references in texts written in the 1890s by two men born in the middle of the 19^th century: namely, the autobiographical writings of farmer and school teacher Paulus Paurmann (1850–1903), and the diary of miller Märt Siipsen (1846–1916). Paurmann and Siipsen can be called vernacular literati – despite their poor education they were eager to participate in the modern literary sphere as both readers and writers. Both men depended on nature in their livelihood – this combined with their interest in contemporary literary matters makes them good examples of the spread of modern ideas about nature among the lower social classes. 

The influence of these ideas can manifest in at least three different ways: (1) as an interest in modern scientific ideas; (2) as a wish to shape nature – plant new species, apply new technologies; (3) by using nature (as well as poetic language stemming from nature) to express one’s identity, to position oneself with respect to modern identity markers.

In Siipsen’s text we can see two different ways of positioning oneself in relation to nature: passive (religious) and active (practical). In some passages he states that everything which happens in nature depends on God, whereas in others he describes attempts at designing his surroundings by adding new plants and birds. The relationship between the two remains ambiguous. 

Paurmann has written two autobiographies. The earlier one uses a lot of descriptions of and metaphorical references to nature and its composition adheres to the poetics of sentimental chapbooks; the latter one is written in plain language and barely mentions nature at all. That is to say, references to nature in his writings depend on the chosen poetic language.

In conclusion, we can see that both men have incorporated into their writings certain new ideas about nature that were disseminated in the written discourse at the time. Siipsen mostly describes new ways of designing one’s farmyard, whereas Paurmann turns to poetic uses of nature.

 

Katre Kikas (b. 1981), MA, Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folklore Studies, Researcher (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), katre.kikas@folklore.ee

Keywords: 21st century literature, eco-fiction, citizen science, ornithology

The article compares birdwatchers’ experience of nature with the natural environment as conveyed in literary fiction. The source materials comprise, first of all, interviews conducted with (mostly amateur) Estonian birdwatchers and, secondly, contemporary Estonian and Swedish literary fiction: Maarja Pärtna’s prose poetry collection “The Living City” (Elav linn, 2022), Andrus Kivirähk’s book “Flight to the Moon” (Lend Kuule, 2022), Tõnis Tootsen’s novel “Pâté of the Apes: One Primate’s Thoughts and Memories” (Ahvide pasteet, 2022) and Kerstin Ekman’s novel “The Wolf Run” (Löpa varg, 2021; Estonian translation 2022). The focus is on whether and how the concerns of nature observers relate to anxiety about changes in the natural environment as expressed in contemporary literature. Amateur environmental ­science projects aim to draw attention to concerns about the natural environment and climate change and thereby strive for a smaller personal environmental impact. Eco-fiction, in turn, puts environmental issues into words, setting them into a fathomable, although perhaps altogether unexpected scale: hence, eco-prose and -poesy are essential ways of perceiving that also serve to interpret the ongoing changes.

Environment-oriented literary culture has responded to issues with the natural environment before. Now, too, it can be concluded that environmental concerns have made a forceful entry into literature. All of the above-mentioned authors have found their unique way of conceptualizing our home in an era of environmental crises. Their recently published works tell stories about our surroundings and interpret the present situation; they discuss the anthropocentric viewpoint or depict the human focus from an unexpected perspective; they draw attention to our alien­ation from nature; they reposition the reader and thereby seek solutions to environmental issues. Among other things, they highlight environmentally friendly ways of living and experiencing the world or look at the world through non-human eyes, thus bringing the narrator closer to other forms of being. The writers share with birdwatchers the post-humanist idea of the equality of species as well as a sharp eye for their subject.

 

Elle-Mari Talivee (b. 1974), PhD, Estonian Academy of Sciences, Under and Tuglas ­Literature Centre, Senior Researcher (Väikese Illimari 12, 11623 Tallinn); Tallinn University, Research Fellow, ellemari@utkk.ee

Keywords: Estonian literature, curricula, literary education, Soviet schools, ideology, identity

The article looks at changes in the literature curriculum throughout the Soviet occupation. It discusses the content of the curricula, the ideological context, as well as the proportion of the curriculum dedicated to literary education. Due to the sheer volume of the material available, the article limits itself to mapping out the topic: whether and how the ideological emphases evolved during different periods (Stalinism, the Khrushchev Thaw, the Era of Stagnation); the ratio of Russian (Soviet) to Estonian authors covered in the literary curriculum; the educational system paradoxes involved in literature as a school subject that allows for the expression of certain views.

Three observations are drawn in conclusion.

Firstly, in ideological and party-led education, literature lessons held a special place in Soviet schools. Literature – alongside history – was considered the most important subject for shaping the students’ views.

Secondly, a remarkable portion of the curriculum was allotted to literary education conceived in this manner, to make sure that the mandated authors could be discussed in depth. Without doubt, this involved communist instruction – the intensity of which varied greatly depending on the head of school, the teachers and the decade at hand. However, Estonian literature, especially the literary classics, could still be covered extensively alongside the ideological instruction.

Thirdly, literature lessons evolved into a sphere for the discussion of Estonian nationhood, owing to the fact that the accepted authors represented seminal texts, the examination of which made it possible to also talk about Estonian literary history. In the history of teaching and studying Estonian literature, the Soviet era was particularly notable for its emphasis on literary classics, which undeniably played a crucial role in the preservation of national identity.

The article also notes that Estonian literature largely lost this role in general education schools after Estonia regained its independence.

 

Maarja Vaino (b. 1976), PhD, literary scholar and Director of Tallinn Literary Centre ­(Koidula 12a, 10125 Tallinn), maarja.vaino@gmail.com

Keywords: 1960 Song Festival, exile, Eduard Tubin, cultural relations, splitted society, Soviet influence measures

Khrushchev’s policy of building cultural relations with the West opened up a possibility for communication between Estonians home and abroad in the late 1950s. From the Soviet perspective, this contact was aimed at weakening the anti-Soviet attitudes of refugee organizations and splitting the community that fled to the West. As a consequence of the non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, a portion of the community was determined not to visit their homeland until it was free. Another part, however, did not see much wrong with a trip to their native land. The disagreements and internal divisions of the community inspired the Soviet officials to influence the refugees in different ways. Making use of people’s homesickness and their wish to see friends and family, a number of people were selected for positive inclusion through cultural contact and other means in order to encourage other refugees to follow their example and change their behaviour and attitudes. The 1960 Song Festival seemed like a perfect opportunity to invite people to visit their homeland. The Festival was also meant to coax the acclaimed conductor and composer Eduard Tubin to visit Estonia.

However, the Song Festival failed to activate communication to the desired degree and Tubin also refused to participate. The manipulation of Tubin, which focused on his professional motivation and connections with former colleagues and acquain­tances, finally bore fruit in December 1961. The Ministry of State Security of the Estonian SSR considered this a breakthrough in changing the attitudes of the exiles, as the “emigrant leaders” reacted to Tubin’s visit with calls to refrain from visiting Estonia, which in turn sowed resentment among those who were looking forward to visiting their homeland and deepened internal contradictions. The debate that erupted around attending the Song Festival in Tallinn as well as Tubin’s trip to Estonia brought into view the fragmentation of the Estonian diaspora, the existential concerns of people living in exile that the Soviet authorities deliberately amplified in order to use them for their benefit through various influence operations.

 

Aigi Rahi-Tamm (b. 1965), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of History and Archaeology, Professor of Archival Studies (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), aigi.rahi-tamm@ut.ee

Keywords: family relationships, life narrative, life writing, personal experience stories, trauma

Recent public debates on family-related issues (What constitutes a traditional family? How widespread is domestic violence? What is the purpose of child protective services?) prompted an examination of these themes from the perspective of people’s personal experience. The article is based on manuscripts of life narratives obtained from the collection of Estonian Life Histories in the Estonian Cultural History Archives (EKM EKLA, f 350). The narratives were written down between 1989 and 2017 and provide a glimpse into the societal changes that took place between the 1930s and the early 21^st century. The favoured narrative techniques and the ways these changed at the end of the 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century also become apparent. The article compares Estonian narratives with Finnish ones. The comparison is aided by similar collection methods used both for Estonian and Finnish stories – these are thematic narratives archived by volunteer correspondents. More specifically, the focus is on generational conflicts present in life narratives.

Family relationships (including conflicts) are revealed in the narratives through the lens chosen by the narrator. It seems that family relationships were overshadowed by political issues in Estonian life stories narrated in the 1990s: the narrators concentrated on descriptions of people’s relationship with the Soviet power, including repressive experiences. In the early 2000s, this perspective receded, allowing more space for descriptions of relationships within the family. Depictions of post-war childhood sometimes suggest that children who grew up separately from their mother due to economic, social or other reasons never developed a close bond with her. In narratives collected in 2017, the narrator often looks at her life experience both as a daughter and a mother. In such cases, the focus of the narrative shifts from the relationship between herself and her mother to the development of the narrator as a person.

The comparison between Finnish and Estonian stories reveals that Finnish families tended to remain silent on difficult circumstances, whereas Estonian narratives emphasized the parents’ ability to explain difficult situations to children. Comparing the stories also pointed to a change in the family structure and functions in the 20^th century: the pre-war family model included the parents and the children, while in wartime and post-war families, the mother had to take on the father’s former responsibilities. In Finnish research, this is addressed through the lens of trauma studies (e.g., the aggressiveness of the exhausted single mother towards her children). In Estonia, the issue is seen through the framework of the impact of political repressions on a person’s life. However, the trauma discourse is also evident in Estonian narratives. That is, if the narrators themselves have used corporal punishment on their own children. In such cases, the focus is not so much on the events that took place as on a perception of changing values.

 

Tiiu Jaago (b. 1960), PhD, Associate Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tiiu.jaago@ut.ee

Keywords: life after death, categories of time, travels in the land of the dead, religious tales

The article presents a comparative historical analysis of fairy tales of the Friends in Life and Death (ATU/SUS 470) plot type, their features and distribution among Belarusians, Russians and Estonians. In the Estonian and Belarusian material, stories of this type are in some cases contaminated with the ATU 470A and 471A types.

We examine differences in the flow of time in the real world and other worlds, and consider the features of the chronotope of fairy tales and the organization of artistic space within them, as well as ways of transition and communication between the worlds.

According to the most common plot of ATU/SUS 470 fairy tales, two friends promise to be guests at each other’s weddings. One of them dies and the living friend invites the dead one to his wedding; however, after receiving a counter-invitation, he finds himself in another world. There he either travels with the deceased friend through his world, where he sees various curiosities and paradoxes, or celebrates at the wedding of the deceased friend. It seems to the living person that he spent several hours with the deceased friend (or with his brother or father in some Estonian versions), but when he returns to his own world, he discovers that decades or centuries have passed on Earth. Most often, after this discovery, the hero dies and turns to dust, but there are some rare Estonian versions where he miraculously restores ­himself and his bride to their original state (and age), after which they get married again.

 

Alena Boganeva (b. 1964), PhD, Yakub Kolas Institute of Linguistics of the Center for the Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Head of the Department of Ethnolinguistics (Surhanava 1, Corpus 2, 220072 Minsk, Belarus), elboganeva@gmail.com

Mare Kõiva (b. 1954), PhD, Estonian Literary Museum, Lead Research Fellow of the Department of Folkloristics, acting head of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian ­Studies (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), mare@folklore.ee

Keywords: rhetoric, „The Anxiety of Influence”, irony, metonymy, metaphor, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man

The inspiration for this article came from Jüri Talvet’s observation that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s „Faust” and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald’s „Kalevipoeg” show some remarkable similarities in their philosophical structure and plot. This article therefore aims to compare these two masterpieces by using Harold Bloom’s and Paul de Man’s understanding of tropes. While allusion and intertextuality studies typically focus on a limited number of similarities between two texts, Bloom’s anxiety of influence theory helps to apprehend both texts as a whole. This objective is achievable with two constraints. Firstly, making such a comparison requires us to widen our understanding of tropes. In this analysis, tropes do not signify limited transfers of meaning (from one word to another), but the full transformation of a text’s meaning. The background to this article lies in the hypothesis that large chunks of ­„Kalevipoeg” can be read as tropes that are derived from the verses of „Faust”. ­Secondly, this kind of analysis cannot focus on the style, genre or semantic nuances of both works, but only on the general picture: the stories and their protagonists. The anxiety of influence theory shows that the change of meaning from one work to another can be described by means of two kinds of tropes: limiting and repeating ones. In this article, the limiting tropes of irony, metonymy and metaphor can be used to depict the change of meaning from „Faust” to „Kalevipoeg”. The story of an intellectual who makes a pact with the devil, seeks absolute love and wishes to accomplish godly deeds becomes a story of a mythically strong hero who has no choice, never finds true love and achieves predestined greatness. According to Bloom, this is only half of the comparison. In a follow-up article, I will show how the repeating tropes of synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis can be used to demonstrate that the fate of these different protagonists is in fact somewhat similar.

 

Tõnis Parksepp (b. 1987), MA, freelance dramatist; University of Tartu, doctoral student at the Institute of Cultural Research (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tonisparksepp@gmail.com

Keywords: semantic types, polysemy, lexicography, lexicology, perception adjectives, corpus linguistics, Estonian

The article aims to identify the patterns of systematic polysemy for Estonian tactile adjectives using semantic types and corpus data. It also discusses the presentation of semantic patterns in a dictionary. This will help to provide a theoretical basis for lexicographers and to align the presentation of adjective polysemy in dictionaries. The dataset for the study consists of 265 tactile adjectives.

The corpus manager and text analysis software Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004, 2014) is used for corpus context analysis. The program allows to observe the collocations of a word based on various statistics, to generate word sketches, and to study words used in similar contexts by means of the thesaurus function. To find the patterns, semantic types are assigned to meanings and similarities are searched between meaning shifts. For tagging the adjective meanings, the semantic types developed to describe Estonian (polysemous) adjectives (Tuulik 2014; Tuulik, Langemets 2016) are used, and for noun meanings, the semantic types of the Estonian noun developed by Margit Langemets (2010) are used. The research method used for analyzing polysemy in the article is of a practical nature and has grown out of real-life lexicographical work.

A total of 13 polysemy patterns emerged in the tactile adjective group. The most common shift was from tactile characteristics to psychological characteristics (in the sense structure of 43 words). Shifts could be observed from pleasant tactile sensations to positive mental characteristics (e.g pehme padi ‘soft pillow’, pehme loomuga ‘soft-natured’) and from unpleasant touch experience to mentally unpleasant experience (okkaline roos ‘thorny rose’, okkaline iseloom ‘thorny character’). The study of systematic polysemy points to a strong link between the domains of tactile touch and feelings.

The lexicographic presentation of polysemous patterns varied. The pattern was represented as: 1) two distinct primary meanings; 2) primary meaning and submeaning(s); 3) a common aggregate meaning; 4) systematic polysemy that appeared in the corpus but was not presented. The analysis showed that lexicographers may perceive and present one and the same pattern in different ways; therefore, familiarity with polysemy patterns associated with the respective semantic type could contribute to a more systematic presentation.

 

Maria Tuulik (b. 1985), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer (Roosi­krantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), maria.tuulik@eki.ee

Keywords: usage-based linguistics, corpus linguistics, language planning, corpus planning, verb government, Estonian

For over a century, attempts have been made in Estonian language planning to standardize the oblique case selection of verbs (traditionally: verb government), but variation persists in actual language use. In this paper we look at the case selection patterns of a number of verbs, with which variation is said to occur without any semantic difference.

We look at the historical process of how corpus planning has decided on the “right” case-selection and compare it to actual language use from 1900–1939 and 2019–2021. Our analysis shows that variation is still present in the 2019–2021 data. A detailed multifactorial analysis of variation between comitative or allative marking of the oblique argument of the verb sarnanema ‘to resemble’ reveals that the most important factor affecting the choice between the two is in fact semantic, which has remained unnoticed by language planners for over a century. Language planners should therefore systematically take into account the results of linguistic research (based on actual language use), and linguists, in turn, should pay attention to variations in Standard Estonian in order to provide new input for language planners.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher, Language Planner (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Liina Lindström (b. 1973), PhD, University of Tartu, Professor of Modern Estonian Lan­guage (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), liina.lindstrom@ut.ee

Keywords: autobiographical writings, modernity, nature, vernacular literarcy

The article looks at nature references in texts written in the 1890s by two men born in the middle of the 19^th century: namely, the autobiographical writings of farmer and school teacher Paulus Paurmann (1850–1903), and the diary of miller Märt Siipsen (1846–1916). Paurmann and Siipsen can be called vernacular literati – despite their poor education they were eager to participate in the modern literary sphere as both readers and writers. Both men depended on nature in their livelihood – this combined with their interest in contemporary literary matters makes them good examples of the spread of modern ideas about nature among the lower social classes. 

The influence of these ideas can manifest in at least three different ways: (1) as an interest in modern scientific ideas; (2) as a wish to shape nature – plant new species, apply new technologies; (3) by using nature (as well as poetic language stemming from nature) to express one’s identity, to position oneself with respect to modern identity markers.

In Siipsen’s text we can see two different ways of positioning oneself in relation to nature: passive (religious) and active (practical). In some passages he states that everything which happens in nature depends on God, whereas in others he describes attempts at designing his surroundings by adding new plants and birds. The relationship between the two remains ambiguous. 

Paurmann has written two autobiographies. The earlier one uses a lot of descriptions of and metaphorical references to nature and its composition adheres to the poetics of sentimental chapbooks; the latter one is written in plain language and barely mentions nature at all. That is to say, references to nature in his writings depend on the chosen poetic language.

In conclusion, we can see that both men have incorporated into their writings certain new ideas about nature that were disseminated in the written discourse at the time. Siipsen mostly describes new ways of designing one’s farmyard, whereas Paurmann turns to poetic uses of nature.

 

Katre Kikas (b. 1981), MA, Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folklore Studies, Researcher (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), katre.kikas@folklore.ee

Keywords: 21st century literature, eco-fiction, citizen science, ornithology

The article compares birdwatchers’ experience of nature with the natural environment as conveyed in literary fiction. The source materials comprise, first of all, interviews conducted with (mostly amateur) Estonian birdwatchers and, secondly, contemporary Estonian and Swedish literary fiction: Maarja Pärtna’s prose poetry collection “The Living City” (Elav linn, 2022), Andrus Kivirähk’s book “Flight to the Moon” (Lend Kuule, 2022), Tõnis Tootsen’s novel “Pâté of the Apes: One Primate’s Thoughts and Memories” (Ahvide pasteet, 2022) and Kerstin Ekman’s novel “The Wolf Run” (Löpa varg, 2021; Estonian translation 2022). The focus is on whether and how the concerns of nature observers relate to anxiety about changes in the natural environment as expressed in contemporary literature. Amateur environmental ­science projects aim to draw attention to concerns about the natural environment and climate change and thereby strive for a smaller personal environmental impact. Eco-fiction, in turn, puts environmental issues into words, setting them into a fathomable, although perhaps altogether unexpected scale: hence, eco-prose and -poesy are essential ways of perceiving that also serve to interpret the ongoing changes.

Environment-oriented literary culture has responded to issues with the natural environment before. Now, too, it can be concluded that environmental concerns have made a forceful entry into literature. All of the above-mentioned authors have found their unique way of conceptualizing our home in an era of environmental crises. Their recently published works tell stories about our surroundings and interpret the present situation; they discuss the anthropocentric viewpoint or depict the human focus from an unexpected perspective; they draw attention to our alien­ation from nature; they reposition the reader and thereby seek solutions to environmental issues. Among other things, they highlight environmentally friendly ways of living and experiencing the world or look at the world through non-human eyes, thus bringing the narrator closer to other forms of being. The writers share with birdwatchers the post-humanist idea of the equality of species as well as a sharp eye for their subject.

 

Elle-Mari Talivee (b. 1974), PhD, Estonian Academy of Sciences, Under and Tuglas ­Literature Centre, Senior Researcher (Väikese Illimari 12, 11623 Tallinn); Tallinn University, Research Fellow, ellemari@utkk.ee

Keywords: Estonian literature, curricula, literary education, Soviet schools, ideology, identity

The article looks at changes in the literature curriculum throughout the Soviet occupation. It discusses the content of the curricula, the ideological context, as well as the proportion of the curriculum dedicated to literary education. Due to the sheer volume of the material available, the article limits itself to mapping out the topic: whether and how the ideological emphases evolved during different periods (Stalinism, the Khrushchev Thaw, the Era of Stagnation); the ratio of Russian (Soviet) to Estonian authors covered in the literary curriculum; the educational system paradoxes involved in literature as a school subject that allows for the expression of certain views.

Three observations are drawn in conclusion.

Firstly, in ideological and party-led education, literature lessons held a special place in Soviet schools. Literature – alongside history – was considered the most important subject for shaping the students’ views.

Secondly, a remarkable portion of the curriculum was allotted to literary education conceived in this manner, to make sure that the mandated authors could be discussed in depth. Without doubt, this involved communist instruction – the intensity of which varied greatly depending on the head of school, the teachers and the decade at hand. However, Estonian literature, especially the literary classics, could still be covered extensively alongside the ideological instruction.

Thirdly, literature lessons evolved into a sphere for the discussion of Estonian nationhood, owing to the fact that the accepted authors represented seminal texts, the examination of which made it possible to also talk about Estonian literary history. In the history of teaching and studying Estonian literature, the Soviet era was particularly notable for its emphasis on literary classics, which undeniably played a crucial role in the preservation of national identity.

The article also notes that Estonian literature largely lost this role in general education schools after Estonia regained its independence.

 

Maarja Vaino (b. 1976), PhD, literary scholar and Director of Tallinn Literary Centre ­(Koidula 12a, 10125 Tallinn), maarja.vaino@gmail.com

Keywords: 1960 Song Festival, exile, Eduard Tubin, cultural relations, splitted society, Soviet influence measures

Khrushchev’s policy of building cultural relations with the West opened up a possibility for communication between Estonians home and abroad in the late 1950s. From the Soviet perspective, this contact was aimed at weakening the anti-Soviet attitudes of refugee organizations and splitting the community that fled to the West. As a consequence of the non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, a portion of the community was determined not to visit their homeland until it was free. Another part, however, did not see much wrong with a trip to their native land. The disagreements and internal divisions of the community inspired the Soviet officials to influence the refugees in different ways. Making use of people’s homesickness and their wish to see friends and family, a number of people were selected for positive inclusion through cultural contact and other means in order to encourage other refugees to follow their example and change their behaviour and attitudes. The 1960 Song Festival seemed like a perfect opportunity to invite people to visit their homeland. The Festival was also meant to coax the acclaimed conductor and composer Eduard Tubin to visit Estonia.

However, the Song Festival failed to activate communication to the desired degree and Tubin also refused to participate. The manipulation of Tubin, which focused on his professional motivation and connections with former colleagues and acquain­tances, finally bore fruit in December 1961. The Ministry of State Security of the Estonian SSR considered this a breakthrough in changing the attitudes of the exiles, as the “emigrant leaders” reacted to Tubin’s visit with calls to refrain from visiting Estonia, which in turn sowed resentment among those who were looking forward to visiting their homeland and deepened internal contradictions. The debate that erupted around attending the Song Festival in Tallinn as well as Tubin’s trip to Estonia brought into view the fragmentation of the Estonian diaspora, the existential concerns of people living in exile that the Soviet authorities deliberately amplified in order to use them for their benefit through various influence operations.

 

Aigi Rahi-Tamm (b. 1965), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of History and Archaeology, Professor of Archival Studies (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), aigi.rahi-tamm@ut.ee

Keywords: family relationships, life narrative, life writing, personal experience stories, trauma

Recent public debates on family-related issues (What constitutes a traditional family? How widespread is domestic violence? What is the purpose of child protective services?) prompted an examination of these themes from the perspective of people’s personal experience. The article is based on manuscripts of life narratives obtained from the collection of Estonian Life Histories in the Estonian Cultural History Archives (EKM EKLA, f 350). The narratives were written down between 1989 and 2017 and provide a glimpse into the societal changes that took place between the 1930s and the early 21^st century. The favoured narrative techniques and the ways these changed at the end of the 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century also become apparent. The article compares Estonian narratives with Finnish ones. The comparison is aided by similar collection methods used both for Estonian and Finnish stories – these are thematic narratives archived by volunteer correspondents. More specifically, the focus is on generational conflicts present in life narratives.

Family relationships (including conflicts) are revealed in the narratives through the lens chosen by the narrator. It seems that family relationships were overshadowed by political issues in Estonian life stories narrated in the 1990s: the narrators concentrated on descriptions of people’s relationship with the Soviet power, including repressive experiences. In the early 2000s, this perspective receded, allowing more space for descriptions of relationships within the family. Depictions of post-war childhood sometimes suggest that children who grew up separately from their mother due to economic, social or other reasons never developed a close bond with her. In narratives collected in 2017, the narrator often looks at her life experience both as a daughter and a mother. In such cases, the focus of the narrative shifts from the relationship between herself and her mother to the development of the narrator as a person.

The comparison between Finnish and Estonian stories reveals that Finnish families tended to remain silent on difficult circumstances, whereas Estonian narratives emphasized the parents’ ability to explain difficult situations to children. Comparing the stories also pointed to a change in the family structure and functions in the 20^th century: the pre-war family model included the parents and the children, while in wartime and post-war families, the mother had to take on the father’s former responsibilities. In Finnish research, this is addressed through the lens of trauma studies (e.g., the aggressiveness of the exhausted single mother towards her children). In Estonia, the issue is seen through the framework of the impact of political repressions on a person’s life. However, the trauma discourse is also evident in Estonian narratives. That is, if the narrators themselves have used corporal punishment on their own children. In such cases, the focus is not so much on the events that took place as on a perception of changing values.

 

Tiiu Jaago (b. 1960), PhD, Associate Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tiiu.jaago@ut.ee

Keywords: life after death, categories of time, travels in the land of the dead, religious tales

The article presents a comparative historical analysis of fairy tales of the Friends in Life and Death (ATU/SUS 470) plot type, their features and distribution among Belarusians, Russians and Estonians. In the Estonian and Belarusian material, stories of this type are in some cases contaminated with the ATU 470A and 471A types.

We examine differences in the flow of time in the real world and other worlds, and consider the features of the chronotope of fairy tales and the organization of artistic space within them, as well as ways of transition and communication between the worlds.

According to the most common plot of ATU/SUS 470 fairy tales, two friends promise to be guests at each other’s weddings. One of them dies and the living friend invites the dead one to his wedding; however, after receiving a counter-invitation, he finds himself in another world. There he either travels with the deceased friend through his world, where he sees various curiosities and paradoxes, or celebrates at the wedding of the deceased friend. It seems to the living person that he spent several hours with the deceased friend (or with his brother or father in some Estonian versions), but when he returns to his own world, he discovers that decades or centuries have passed on Earth. Most often, after this discovery, the hero dies and turns to dust, but there are some rare Estonian versions where he miraculously restores ­himself and his bride to their original state (and age), after which they get married again.

 

Alena Boganeva (b. 1964), PhD, Yakub Kolas Institute of Linguistics of the Center for the Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Head of the Department of Ethnolinguistics (Surhanava 1, Corpus 2, 220072 Minsk, Belarus), elboganeva@gmail.com

Mare Kõiva (b. 1954), PhD, Estonian Literary Museum, Lead Research Fellow of the Department of Folkloristics, acting head of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian ­Studies (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), mare@folklore.ee

Keywords: rhetoric, „The Anxiety of Influence”, irony, metonymy, metaphor, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man

The inspiration for this article came from Jüri Talvet’s observation that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s „Faust” and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald’s „Kalevipoeg” show some remarkable similarities in their philosophical structure and plot. This article therefore aims to compare these two masterpieces by using Harold Bloom’s and Paul de Man’s understanding of tropes. While allusion and intertextuality studies typically focus on a limited number of similarities between two texts, Bloom’s anxiety of influence theory helps to apprehend both texts as a whole. This objective is achievable with two constraints. Firstly, making such a comparison requires us to widen our understanding of tropes. In this analysis, tropes do not signify limited transfers of meaning (from one word to another), but the full transformation of a text’s meaning. The background to this article lies in the hypothesis that large chunks of ­„Kalevipoeg” can be read as tropes that are derived from the verses of „Faust”. ­Secondly, this kind of analysis cannot focus on the style, genre or semantic nuances of both works, but only on the general picture: the stories and their protagonists. The anxiety of influence theory shows that the change of meaning from one work to another can be described by means of two kinds of tropes: limiting and repeating ones. In this article, the limiting tropes of irony, metonymy and metaphor can be used to depict the change of meaning from „Faust” to „Kalevipoeg”. The story of an intellectual who makes a pact with the devil, seeks absolute love and wishes to accomplish godly deeds becomes a story of a mythically strong hero who has no choice, never finds true love and achieves predestined greatness. According to Bloom, this is only half of the comparison. In a follow-up article, I will show how the repeating tropes of synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis can be used to demonstrate that the fate of these different protagonists is in fact somewhat similar.

 

Tõnis Parksepp (b. 1987), MA, freelance dramatist; University of Tartu, doctoral student at the Institute of Cultural Research (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tonisparksepp@gmail.com

Keywords: semantic types, polysemy, lexicography, lexicology, perception adjectives, corpus linguistics, Estonian

The article aims to identify the patterns of systematic polysemy for Estonian tactile adjectives using semantic types and corpus data. It also discusses the presentation of semantic patterns in a dictionary. This will help to provide a theoretical basis for lexicographers and to align the presentation of adjective polysemy in dictionaries. The dataset for the study consists of 265 tactile adjectives.

The corpus manager and text analysis software Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004, 2014) is used for corpus context analysis. The program allows to observe the collocations of a word based on various statistics, to generate word sketches, and to study words used in similar contexts by means of the thesaurus function. To find the patterns, semantic types are assigned to meanings and similarities are searched between meaning shifts. For tagging the adjective meanings, the semantic types developed to describe Estonian (polysemous) adjectives (Tuulik 2014; Tuulik, Langemets 2016) are used, and for noun meanings, the semantic types of the Estonian noun developed by Margit Langemets (2010) are used. The research method used for analyzing polysemy in the article is of a practical nature and has grown out of real-life lexicographical work.

A total of 13 polysemy patterns emerged in the tactile adjective group. The most common shift was from tactile characteristics to psychological characteristics (in the sense structure of 43 words). Shifts could be observed from pleasant tactile sensations to positive mental characteristics (e.g pehme padi ‘soft pillow’, pehme loomuga ‘soft-natured’) and from unpleasant touch experience to mentally unpleasant experience (okkaline roos ‘thorny rose’, okkaline iseloom ‘thorny character’). The study of systematic polysemy points to a strong link between the domains of tactile touch and feelings.

The lexicographic presentation of polysemous patterns varied. The pattern was represented as: 1) two distinct primary meanings; 2) primary meaning and submeaning(s); 3) a common aggregate meaning; 4) systematic polysemy that appeared in the corpus but was not presented. The analysis showed that lexicographers may perceive and present one and the same pattern in different ways; therefore, familiarity with polysemy patterns associated with the respective semantic type could contribute to a more systematic presentation.

 

Maria Tuulik (b. 1985), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer (Roosi­krantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), maria.tuulik@eki.ee

Keywords: usage-based linguistics, corpus linguistics, language planning, corpus planning, verb government, Estonian

For over a century, attempts have been made in Estonian language planning to standardize the oblique case selection of verbs (traditionally: verb government), but variation persists in actual language use. In this paper we look at the case selection patterns of a number of verbs, with which variation is said to occur without any semantic difference.

We look at the historical process of how corpus planning has decided on the “right” case-selection and compare it to actual language use from 1900–1939 and 2019–2021. Our analysis shows that variation is still present in the 2019–2021 data. A detailed multifactorial analysis of variation between comitative or allative marking of the oblique argument of the verb sarnanema ‘to resemble’ reveals that the most important factor affecting the choice between the two is in fact semantic, which has remained unnoticed by language planners for over a century. Language planners should therefore systematically take into account the results of linguistic research (based on actual language use), and linguists, in turn, should pay attention to variations in Standard Estonian in order to provide new input for language planners.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher, Language Planner (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Liina Lindström (b. 1973), PhD, University of Tartu, Professor of Modern Estonian Lan­guage (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), liina.lindstrom@ut.ee

Keywords: autobiographical writings, modernity, nature, vernacular literarcy

The article looks at nature references in texts written in the 1890s by two men born in the middle of the 19^th century: namely, the autobiographical writings of farmer and school teacher Paulus Paurmann (1850–1903), and the diary of miller Märt Siipsen (1846–1916). Paurmann and Siipsen can be called vernacular literati – despite their poor education they were eager to participate in the modern literary sphere as both readers and writers. Both men depended on nature in their livelihood – this combined with their interest in contemporary literary matters makes them good examples of the spread of modern ideas about nature among the lower social classes. 

The influence of these ideas can manifest in at least three different ways: (1) as an interest in modern scientific ideas; (2) as a wish to shape nature – plant new species, apply new technologies; (3) by using nature (as well as poetic language stemming from nature) to express one’s identity, to position oneself with respect to modern identity markers.

In Siipsen’s text we can see two different ways of positioning oneself in relation to nature: passive (religious) and active (practical). In some passages he states that everything which happens in nature depends on God, whereas in others he describes attempts at designing his surroundings by adding new plants and birds. The relationship between the two remains ambiguous. 

Paurmann has written two autobiographies. The earlier one uses a lot of descriptions of and metaphorical references to nature and its composition adheres to the poetics of sentimental chapbooks; the latter one is written in plain language and barely mentions nature at all. That is to say, references to nature in his writings depend on the chosen poetic language.

In conclusion, we can see that both men have incorporated into their writings certain new ideas about nature that were disseminated in the written discourse at the time. Siipsen mostly describes new ways of designing one’s farmyard, whereas Paurmann turns to poetic uses of nature.

 

Katre Kikas (b. 1981), MA, Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folklore Studies, Researcher (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), katre.kikas@folklore.ee

Keywords: 21st century literature, eco-fiction, citizen science, ornithology

The article compares birdwatchers’ experience of nature with the natural environment as conveyed in literary fiction. The source materials comprise, first of all, interviews conducted with (mostly amateur) Estonian birdwatchers and, secondly, contemporary Estonian and Swedish literary fiction: Maarja Pärtna’s prose poetry collection “The Living City” (Elav linn, 2022), Andrus Kivirähk’s book “Flight to the Moon” (Lend Kuule, 2022), Tõnis Tootsen’s novel “Pâté of the Apes: One Primate’s Thoughts and Memories” (Ahvide pasteet, 2022) and Kerstin Ekman’s novel “The Wolf Run” (Löpa varg, 2021; Estonian translation 2022). The focus is on whether and how the concerns of nature observers relate to anxiety about changes in the natural environment as expressed in contemporary literature. Amateur environmental ­science projects aim to draw attention to concerns about the natural environment and climate change and thereby strive for a smaller personal environmental impact. Eco-fiction, in turn, puts environmental issues into words, setting them into a fathomable, although perhaps altogether unexpected scale: hence, eco-prose and -poesy are essential ways of perceiving that also serve to interpret the ongoing changes.

Environment-oriented literary culture has responded to issues with the natural environment before. Now, too, it can be concluded that environmental concerns have made a forceful entry into literature. All of the above-mentioned authors have found their unique way of conceptualizing our home in an era of environmental crises. Their recently published works tell stories about our surroundings and interpret the present situation; they discuss the anthropocentric viewpoint or depict the human focus from an unexpected perspective; they draw attention to our alien­ation from nature; they reposition the reader and thereby seek solutions to environmental issues. Among other things, they highlight environmentally friendly ways of living and experiencing the world or look at the world through non-human eyes, thus bringing the narrator closer to other forms of being. The writers share with birdwatchers the post-humanist idea of the equality of species as well as a sharp eye for their subject.

 

Elle-Mari Talivee (b. 1974), PhD, Estonian Academy of Sciences, Under and Tuglas ­Literature Centre, Senior Researcher (Väikese Illimari 12, 11623 Tallinn); Tallinn University, Research Fellow, ellemari@utkk.ee

Keywords: Estonian literature, curricula, literary education, Soviet schools, ideology, identity

The article looks at changes in the literature curriculum throughout the Soviet occupation. It discusses the content of the curricula, the ideological context, as well as the proportion of the curriculum dedicated to literary education. Due to the sheer volume of the material available, the article limits itself to mapping out the topic: whether and how the ideological emphases evolved during different periods (Stalinism, the Khrushchev Thaw, the Era of Stagnation); the ratio of Russian (Soviet) to Estonian authors covered in the literary curriculum; the educational system paradoxes involved in literature as a school subject that allows for the expression of certain views.

Three observations are drawn in conclusion.

Firstly, in ideological and party-led education, literature lessons held a special place in Soviet schools. Literature – alongside history – was considered the most important subject for shaping the students’ views.

Secondly, a remarkable portion of the curriculum was allotted to literary education conceived in this manner, to make sure that the mandated authors could be discussed in depth. Without doubt, this involved communist instruction – the intensity of which varied greatly depending on the head of school, the teachers and the decade at hand. However, Estonian literature, especially the literary classics, could still be covered extensively alongside the ideological instruction.

Thirdly, literature lessons evolved into a sphere for the discussion of Estonian nationhood, owing to the fact that the accepted authors represented seminal texts, the examination of which made it possible to also talk about Estonian literary history. In the history of teaching and studying Estonian literature, the Soviet era was particularly notable for its emphasis on literary classics, which undeniably played a crucial role in the preservation of national identity.

The article also notes that Estonian literature largely lost this role in general education schools after Estonia regained its independence.

 

Maarja Vaino (b. 1976), PhD, literary scholar and Director of Tallinn Literary Centre ­(Koidula 12a, 10125 Tallinn), maarja.vaino@gmail.com

Keywords: 1960 Song Festival, exile, Eduard Tubin, cultural relations, splitted society, Soviet influence measures

Khrushchev’s policy of building cultural relations with the West opened up a possibility for communication between Estonians home and abroad in the late 1950s. From the Soviet perspective, this contact was aimed at weakening the anti-Soviet attitudes of refugee organizations and splitting the community that fled to the West. As a consequence of the non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, a portion of the community was determined not to visit their homeland until it was free. Another part, however, did not see much wrong with a trip to their native land. The disagreements and internal divisions of the community inspired the Soviet officials to influence the refugees in different ways. Making use of people’s homesickness and their wish to see friends and family, a number of people were selected for positive inclusion through cultural contact and other means in order to encourage other refugees to follow their example and change their behaviour and attitudes. The 1960 Song Festival seemed like a perfect opportunity to invite people to visit their homeland. The Festival was also meant to coax the acclaimed conductor and composer Eduard Tubin to visit Estonia.

However, the Song Festival failed to activate communication to the desired degree and Tubin also refused to participate. The manipulation of Tubin, which focused on his professional motivation and connections with former colleagues and acquain­tances, finally bore fruit in December 1961. The Ministry of State Security of the Estonian SSR considered this a breakthrough in changing the attitudes of the exiles, as the “emigrant leaders” reacted to Tubin’s visit with calls to refrain from visiting Estonia, which in turn sowed resentment among those who were looking forward to visiting their homeland and deepened internal contradictions. The debate that erupted around attending the Song Festival in Tallinn as well as Tubin’s trip to Estonia brought into view the fragmentation of the Estonian diaspora, the existential concerns of people living in exile that the Soviet authorities deliberately amplified in order to use them for their benefit through various influence operations.

 

Aigi Rahi-Tamm (b. 1965), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of History and Archaeology, Professor of Archival Studies (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), aigi.rahi-tamm@ut.ee

Keywords: family relationships, life narrative, life writing, personal experience stories, trauma

Recent public debates on family-related issues (What constitutes a traditional family? How widespread is domestic violence? What is the purpose of child protective services?) prompted an examination of these themes from the perspective of people’s personal experience. The article is based on manuscripts of life narratives obtained from the collection of Estonian Life Histories in the Estonian Cultural History Archives (EKM EKLA, f 350). The narratives were written down between 1989 and 2017 and provide a glimpse into the societal changes that took place between the 1930s and the early 21^st century. The favoured narrative techniques and the ways these changed at the end of the 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century also become apparent. The article compares Estonian narratives with Finnish ones. The comparison is aided by similar collection methods used both for Estonian and Finnish stories – these are thematic narratives archived by volunteer correspondents. More specifically, the focus is on generational conflicts present in life narratives.

Family relationships (including conflicts) are revealed in the narratives through the lens chosen by the narrator. It seems that family relationships were overshadowed by political issues in Estonian life stories narrated in the 1990s: the narrators concentrated on descriptions of people’s relationship with the Soviet power, including repressive experiences. In the early 2000s, this perspective receded, allowing more space for descriptions of relationships within the family. Depictions of post-war childhood sometimes suggest that children who grew up separately from their mother due to economic, social or other reasons never developed a close bond with her. In narratives collected in 2017, the narrator often looks at her life experience both as a daughter and a mother. In such cases, the focus of the narrative shifts from the relationship between herself and her mother to the development of the narrator as a person.

The comparison between Finnish and Estonian stories reveals that Finnish families tended to remain silent on difficult circumstances, whereas Estonian narratives emphasized the parents’ ability to explain difficult situations to children. Comparing the stories also pointed to a change in the family structure and functions in the 20^th century: the pre-war family model included the parents and the children, while in wartime and post-war families, the mother had to take on the father’s former responsibilities. In Finnish research, this is addressed through the lens of trauma studies (e.g., the aggressiveness of the exhausted single mother towards her children). In Estonia, the issue is seen through the framework of the impact of political repressions on a person’s life. However, the trauma discourse is also evident in Estonian narratives. That is, if the narrators themselves have used corporal punishment on their own children. In such cases, the focus is not so much on the events that took place as on a perception of changing values.

 

Tiiu Jaago (b. 1960), PhD, Associate Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tiiu.jaago@ut.ee

Keywords: life after death, categories of time, travels in the land of the dead, religious tales

The article presents a comparative historical analysis of fairy tales of the Friends in Life and Death (ATU/SUS 470) plot type, their features and distribution among Belarusians, Russians and Estonians. In the Estonian and Belarusian material, stories of this type are in some cases contaminated with the ATU 470A and 471A types.

We examine differences in the flow of time in the real world and other worlds, and consider the features of the chronotope of fairy tales and the organization of artistic space within them, as well as ways of transition and communication between the worlds.

According to the most common plot of ATU/SUS 470 fairy tales, two friends promise to be guests at each other’s weddings. One of them dies and the living friend invites the dead one to his wedding; however, after receiving a counter-invitation, he finds himself in another world. There he either travels with the deceased friend through his world, where he sees various curiosities and paradoxes, or celebrates at the wedding of the deceased friend. It seems to the living person that he spent several hours with the deceased friend (or with his brother or father in some Estonian versions), but when he returns to his own world, he discovers that decades or centuries have passed on Earth. Most often, after this discovery, the hero dies and turns to dust, but there are some rare Estonian versions where he miraculously restores ­himself and his bride to their original state (and age), after which they get married again.

 

Alena Boganeva (b. 1964), PhD, Yakub Kolas Institute of Linguistics of the Center for the Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Head of the Department of Ethnolinguistics (Surhanava 1, Corpus 2, 220072 Minsk, Belarus), elboganeva@gmail.com

Mare Kõiva (b. 1954), PhD, Estonian Literary Museum, Lead Research Fellow of the Department of Folkloristics, acting head of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian ­Studies (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), mare@folklore.ee

Keywords: rhetoric, „The Anxiety of Influence”, irony, metonymy, metaphor, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man

The inspiration for this article came from Jüri Talvet’s observation that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s „Faust” and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald’s „Kalevipoeg” show some remarkable similarities in their philosophical structure and plot. This article therefore aims to compare these two masterpieces by using Harold Bloom’s and Paul de Man’s understanding of tropes. While allusion and intertextuality studies typically focus on a limited number of similarities between two texts, Bloom’s anxiety of influence theory helps to apprehend both texts as a whole. This objective is achievable with two constraints. Firstly, making such a comparison requires us to widen our understanding of tropes. In this analysis, tropes do not signify limited transfers of meaning (from one word to another), but the full transformation of a text’s meaning. The background to this article lies in the hypothesis that large chunks of ­„Kalevipoeg” can be read as tropes that are derived from the verses of „Faust”. ­Secondly, this kind of analysis cannot focus on the style, genre or semantic nuances of both works, but only on the general picture: the stories and their protagonists. The anxiety of influence theory shows that the change of meaning from one work to another can be described by means of two kinds of tropes: limiting and repeating ones. In this article, the limiting tropes of irony, metonymy and metaphor can be used to depict the change of meaning from „Faust” to „Kalevipoeg”. The story of an intellectual who makes a pact with the devil, seeks absolute love and wishes to accomplish godly deeds becomes a story of a mythically strong hero who has no choice, never finds true love and achieves predestined greatness. According to Bloom, this is only half of the comparison. In a follow-up article, I will show how the repeating tropes of synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis can be used to demonstrate that the fate of these different protagonists is in fact somewhat similar.

 

Tõnis Parksepp (b. 1987), MA, freelance dramatist; University of Tartu, doctoral student at the Institute of Cultural Research (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tonisparksepp@gmail.com

Keywords: semantic types, polysemy, lexicography, lexicology, perception adjectives, corpus linguistics, Estonian

The article aims to identify the patterns of systematic polysemy for Estonian tactile adjectives using semantic types and corpus data. It also discusses the presentation of semantic patterns in a dictionary. This will help to provide a theoretical basis for lexicographers and to align the presentation of adjective polysemy in dictionaries. The dataset for the study consists of 265 tactile adjectives.

The corpus manager and text analysis software Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004, 2014) is used for corpus context analysis. The program allows to observe the collocations of a word based on various statistics, to generate word sketches, and to study words used in similar contexts by means of the thesaurus function. To find the patterns, semantic types are assigned to meanings and similarities are searched between meaning shifts. For tagging the adjective meanings, the semantic types developed to describe Estonian (polysemous) adjectives (Tuulik 2014; Tuulik, Langemets 2016) are used, and for noun meanings, the semantic types of the Estonian noun developed by Margit Langemets (2010) are used. The research method used for analyzing polysemy in the article is of a practical nature and has grown out of real-life lexicographical work.

A total of 13 polysemy patterns emerged in the tactile adjective group. The most common shift was from tactile characteristics to psychological characteristics (in the sense structure of 43 words). Shifts could be observed from pleasant tactile sensations to positive mental characteristics (e.g pehme padi ‘soft pillow’, pehme loomuga ‘soft-natured’) and from unpleasant touch experience to mentally unpleasant experience (okkaline roos ‘thorny rose’, okkaline iseloom ‘thorny character’). The study of systematic polysemy points to a strong link between the domains of tactile touch and feelings.

The lexicographic presentation of polysemous patterns varied. The pattern was represented as: 1) two distinct primary meanings; 2) primary meaning and submeaning(s); 3) a common aggregate meaning; 4) systematic polysemy that appeared in the corpus but was not presented. The analysis showed that lexicographers may perceive and present one and the same pattern in different ways; therefore, familiarity with polysemy patterns associated with the respective semantic type could contribute to a more systematic presentation.

 

Maria Tuulik (b. 1985), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer (Roosi­krantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), maria.tuulik@eki.ee

Keywords: usage-based linguistics, corpus linguistics, language planning, corpus planning, verb government, Estonian

For over a century, attempts have been made in Estonian language planning to standardize the oblique case selection of verbs (traditionally: verb government), but variation persists in actual language use. In this paper we look at the case selection patterns of a number of verbs, with which variation is said to occur without any semantic difference.

We look at the historical process of how corpus planning has decided on the “right” case-selection and compare it to actual language use from 1900–1939 and 2019–2021. Our analysis shows that variation is still present in the 2019–2021 data. A detailed multifactorial analysis of variation between comitative or allative marking of the oblique argument of the verb sarnanema ‘to resemble’ reveals that the most important factor affecting the choice between the two is in fact semantic, which has remained unnoticed by language planners for over a century. Language planners should therefore systematically take into account the results of linguistic research (based on actual language use), and linguists, in turn, should pay attention to variations in Standard Estonian in order to provide new input for language planners.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher, Language Planner (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Liina Lindström (b. 1973), PhD, University of Tartu, Professor of Modern Estonian Lan­guage (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), liina.lindstrom@ut.ee

Keywords: autobiographical writings, modernity, nature, vernacular literarcy

The article looks at nature references in texts written in the 1890s by two men born in the middle of the 19^th century: namely, the autobiographical writings of farmer and school teacher Paulus Paurmann (1850–1903), and the diary of miller Märt Siipsen (1846–1916). Paurmann and Siipsen can be called vernacular literati – despite their poor education they were eager to participate in the modern literary sphere as both readers and writers. Both men depended on nature in their livelihood – this combined with their interest in contemporary literary matters makes them good examples of the spread of modern ideas about nature among the lower social classes. 

The influence of these ideas can manifest in at least three different ways: (1) as an interest in modern scientific ideas; (2) as a wish to shape nature – plant new species, apply new technologies; (3) by using nature (as well as poetic language stemming from nature) to express one’s identity, to position oneself with respect to modern identity markers.

In Siipsen’s text we can see two different ways of positioning oneself in relation to nature: passive (religious) and active (practical). In some passages he states that everything which happens in nature depends on God, whereas in others he describes attempts at designing his surroundings by adding new plants and birds. The relationship between the two remains ambiguous. 

Paurmann has written two autobiographies. The earlier one uses a lot of descriptions of and metaphorical references to nature and its composition adheres to the poetics of sentimental chapbooks; the latter one is written in plain language and barely mentions nature at all. That is to say, references to nature in his writings depend on the chosen poetic language.

In conclusion, we can see that both men have incorporated into their writings certain new ideas about nature that were disseminated in the written discourse at the time. Siipsen mostly describes new ways of designing one’s farmyard, whereas Paurmann turns to poetic uses of nature.

 

Katre Kikas (b. 1981), MA, Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folklore Studies, Researcher (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), katre.kikas@folklore.ee

Keywords: 21st century literature, eco-fiction, citizen science, ornithology

The article compares birdwatchers’ experience of nature with the natural environment as conveyed in literary fiction. The source materials comprise, first of all, interviews conducted with (mostly amateur) Estonian birdwatchers and, secondly, contemporary Estonian and Swedish literary fiction: Maarja Pärtna’s prose poetry collection “The Living City” (Elav linn, 2022), Andrus Kivirähk’s book “Flight to the Moon” (Lend Kuule, 2022), Tõnis Tootsen’s novel “Pâté of the Apes: One Primate’s Thoughts and Memories” (Ahvide pasteet, 2022) and Kerstin Ekman’s novel “The Wolf Run” (Löpa varg, 2021; Estonian translation 2022). The focus is on whether and how the concerns of nature observers relate to anxiety about changes in the natural environment as expressed in contemporary literature. Amateur environmental ­science projects aim to draw attention to concerns about the natural environment and climate change and thereby strive for a smaller personal environmental impact. Eco-fiction, in turn, puts environmental issues into words, setting them into a fathomable, although perhaps altogether unexpected scale: hence, eco-prose and -poesy are essential ways of perceiving that also serve to interpret the ongoing changes.

Environment-oriented literary culture has responded to issues with the natural environment before. Now, too, it can be concluded that environmental concerns have made a forceful entry into literature. All of the above-mentioned authors have found their unique way of conceptualizing our home in an era of environmental crises. Their recently published works tell stories about our surroundings and interpret the present situation; they discuss the anthropocentric viewpoint or depict the human focus from an unexpected perspective; they draw attention to our alien­ation from nature; they reposition the reader and thereby seek solutions to environmental issues. Among other things, they highlight environmentally friendly ways of living and experiencing the world or look at the world through non-human eyes, thus bringing the narrator closer to other forms of being. The writers share with birdwatchers the post-humanist idea of the equality of species as well as a sharp eye for their subject.

 

Elle-Mari Talivee (b. 1974), PhD, Estonian Academy of Sciences, Under and Tuglas ­Literature Centre, Senior Researcher (Väikese Illimari 12, 11623 Tallinn); Tallinn University, Research Fellow, ellemari@utkk.ee

Keywords: Estonian literature, curricula, literary education, Soviet schools, ideology, identity

The article looks at changes in the literature curriculum throughout the Soviet occupation. It discusses the content of the curricula, the ideological context, as well as the proportion of the curriculum dedicated to literary education. Due to the sheer volume of the material available, the article limits itself to mapping out the topic: whether and how the ideological emphases evolved during different periods (Stalinism, the Khrushchev Thaw, the Era of Stagnation); the ratio of Russian (Soviet) to Estonian authors covered in the literary curriculum; the educational system paradoxes involved in literature as a school subject that allows for the expression of certain views.

Three observations are drawn in conclusion.

Firstly, in ideological and party-led education, literature lessons held a special place in Soviet schools. Literature – alongside history – was considered the most important subject for shaping the students’ views.

Secondly, a remarkable portion of the curriculum was allotted to literary education conceived in this manner, to make sure that the mandated authors could be discussed in depth. Without doubt, this involved communist instruction – the intensity of which varied greatly depending on the head of school, the teachers and the decade at hand. However, Estonian literature, especially the literary classics, could still be covered extensively alongside the ideological instruction.

Thirdly, literature lessons evolved into a sphere for the discussion of Estonian nationhood, owing to the fact that the accepted authors represented seminal texts, the examination of which made it possible to also talk about Estonian literary history. In the history of teaching and studying Estonian literature, the Soviet era was particularly notable for its emphasis on literary classics, which undeniably played a crucial role in the preservation of national identity.

The article also notes that Estonian literature largely lost this role in general education schools after Estonia regained its independence.

 

Maarja Vaino (b. 1976), PhD, literary scholar and Director of Tallinn Literary Centre ­(Koidula 12a, 10125 Tallinn), maarja.vaino@gmail.com

Keywords: 1960 Song Festival, exile, Eduard Tubin, cultural relations, splitted society, Soviet influence measures

Khrushchev’s policy of building cultural relations with the West opened up a possibility for communication between Estonians home and abroad in the late 1950s. From the Soviet perspective, this contact was aimed at weakening the anti-Soviet attitudes of refugee organizations and splitting the community that fled to the West. As a consequence of the non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, a portion of the community was determined not to visit their homeland until it was free. Another part, however, did not see much wrong with a trip to their native land. The disagreements and internal divisions of the community inspired the Soviet officials to influence the refugees in different ways. Making use of people’s homesickness and their wish to see friends and family, a number of people were selected for positive inclusion through cultural contact and other means in order to encourage other refugees to follow their example and change their behaviour and attitudes. The 1960 Song Festival seemed like a perfect opportunity to invite people to visit their homeland. The Festival was also meant to coax the acclaimed conductor and composer Eduard Tubin to visit Estonia.

However, the Song Festival failed to activate communication to the desired degree and Tubin also refused to participate. The manipulation of Tubin, which focused on his professional motivation and connections with former colleagues and acquain­tances, finally bore fruit in December 1961. The Ministry of State Security of the Estonian SSR considered this a breakthrough in changing the attitudes of the exiles, as the “emigrant leaders” reacted to Tubin’s visit with calls to refrain from visiting Estonia, which in turn sowed resentment among those who were looking forward to visiting their homeland and deepened internal contradictions. The debate that erupted around attending the Song Festival in Tallinn as well as Tubin’s trip to Estonia brought into view the fragmentation of the Estonian diaspora, the existential concerns of people living in exile that the Soviet authorities deliberately amplified in order to use them for their benefit through various influence operations.

 

Aigi Rahi-Tamm (b. 1965), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of History and Archaeology, Professor of Archival Studies (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), aigi.rahi-tamm@ut.ee

Keywords: family relationships, life narrative, life writing, personal experience stories, trauma

Recent public debates on family-related issues (What constitutes a traditional family? How widespread is domestic violence? What is the purpose of child protective services?) prompted an examination of these themes from the perspective of people’s personal experience. The article is based on manuscripts of life narratives obtained from the collection of Estonian Life Histories in the Estonian Cultural History Archives (EKM EKLA, f 350). The narratives were written down between 1989 and 2017 and provide a glimpse into the societal changes that took place between the 1930s and the early 21^st century. The favoured narrative techniques and the ways these changed at the end of the 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century also become apparent. The article compares Estonian narratives with Finnish ones. The comparison is aided by similar collection methods used both for Estonian and Finnish stories – these are thematic narratives archived by volunteer correspondents. More specifically, the focus is on generational conflicts present in life narratives.

Family relationships (including conflicts) are revealed in the narratives through the lens chosen by the narrator. It seems that family relationships were overshadowed by political issues in Estonian life stories narrated in the 1990s: the narrators concentrated on descriptions of people’s relationship with the Soviet power, including repressive experiences. In the early 2000s, this perspective receded, allowing more space for descriptions of relationships within the family. Depictions of post-war childhood sometimes suggest that children who grew up separately from their mother due to economic, social or other reasons never developed a close bond with her. In narratives collected in 2017, the narrator often looks at her life experience both as a daughter and a mother. In such cases, the focus of the narrative shifts from the relationship between herself and her mother to the development of the narrator as a person.

The comparison between Finnish and Estonian stories reveals that Finnish families tended to remain silent on difficult circumstances, whereas Estonian narratives emphasized the parents’ ability to explain difficult situations to children. Comparing the stories also pointed to a change in the family structure and functions in the 20^th century: the pre-war family model included the parents and the children, while in wartime and post-war families, the mother had to take on the father’s former responsibilities. In Finnish research, this is addressed through the lens of trauma studies (e.g., the aggressiveness of the exhausted single mother towards her children). In Estonia, the issue is seen through the framework of the impact of political repressions on a person’s life. However, the trauma discourse is also evident in Estonian narratives. That is, if the narrators themselves have used corporal punishment on their own children. In such cases, the focus is not so much on the events that took place as on a perception of changing values.

 

Tiiu Jaago (b. 1960), PhD, Associate Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tiiu.jaago@ut.ee

Keywords: life after death, categories of time, travels in the land of the dead, religious tales

The article presents a comparative historical analysis of fairy tales of the Friends in Life and Death (ATU/SUS 470) plot type, their features and distribution among Belarusians, Russians and Estonians. In the Estonian and Belarusian material, stories of this type are in some cases contaminated with the ATU 470A and 471A types.

We examine differences in the flow of time in the real world and other worlds, and consider the features of the chronotope of fairy tales and the organization of artistic space within them, as well as ways of transition and communication between the worlds.

According to the most common plot of ATU/SUS 470 fairy tales, two friends promise to be guests at each other’s weddings. One of them dies and the living friend invites the dead one to his wedding; however, after receiving a counter-invitation, he finds himself in another world. There he either travels with the deceased friend through his world, where he sees various curiosities and paradoxes, or celebrates at the wedding of the deceased friend. It seems to the living person that he spent several hours with the deceased friend (or with his brother or father in some Estonian versions), but when he returns to his own world, he discovers that decades or centuries have passed on Earth. Most often, after this discovery, the hero dies and turns to dust, but there are some rare Estonian versions where he miraculously restores ­himself and his bride to their original state (and age), after which they get married again.

 

Alena Boganeva (b. 1964), PhD, Yakub Kolas Institute of Linguistics of the Center for the Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Head of the Department of Ethnolinguistics (Surhanava 1, Corpus 2, 220072 Minsk, Belarus), elboganeva@gmail.com

Mare Kõiva (b. 1954), PhD, Estonian Literary Museum, Lead Research Fellow of the Department of Folkloristics, acting head of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian ­Studies (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), mare@folklore.ee

Keywords: rhetoric, „The Anxiety of Influence”, irony, metonymy, metaphor, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man

The inspiration for this article came from Jüri Talvet’s observation that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s „Faust” and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald’s „Kalevipoeg” show some remarkable similarities in their philosophical structure and plot. This article therefore aims to compare these two masterpieces by using Harold Bloom’s and Paul de Man’s understanding of tropes. While allusion and intertextuality studies typically focus on a limited number of similarities between two texts, Bloom’s anxiety of influence theory helps to apprehend both texts as a whole. This objective is achievable with two constraints. Firstly, making such a comparison requires us to widen our understanding of tropes. In this analysis, tropes do not signify limited transfers of meaning (from one word to another), but the full transformation of a text’s meaning. The background to this article lies in the hypothesis that large chunks of ­„Kalevipoeg” can be read as tropes that are derived from the verses of „Faust”. ­Secondly, this kind of analysis cannot focus on the style, genre or semantic nuances of both works, but only on the general picture: the stories and their protagonists. The anxiety of influence theory shows that the change of meaning from one work to another can be described by means of two kinds of tropes: limiting and repeating ones. In this article, the limiting tropes of irony, metonymy and metaphor can be used to depict the change of meaning from „Faust” to „Kalevipoeg”. The story of an intellectual who makes a pact with the devil, seeks absolute love and wishes to accomplish godly deeds becomes a story of a mythically strong hero who has no choice, never finds true love and achieves predestined greatness. According to Bloom, this is only half of the comparison. In a follow-up article, I will show how the repeating tropes of synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis can be used to demonstrate that the fate of these different protagonists is in fact somewhat similar.

 

Tõnis Parksepp (b. 1987), MA, freelance dramatist; University of Tartu, doctoral student at the Institute of Cultural Research (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tonisparksepp@gmail.com

Keywords: semantic types, polysemy, lexicography, lexicology, perception adjectives, corpus linguistics, Estonian

The article aims to identify the patterns of systematic polysemy for Estonian tactile adjectives using semantic types and corpus data. It also discusses the presentation of semantic patterns in a dictionary. This will help to provide a theoretical basis for lexicographers and to align the presentation of adjective polysemy in dictionaries. The dataset for the study consists of 265 tactile adjectives.

The corpus manager and text analysis software Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004, 2014) is used for corpus context analysis. The program allows to observe the collocations of a word based on various statistics, to generate word sketches, and to study words used in similar contexts by means of the thesaurus function. To find the patterns, semantic types are assigned to meanings and similarities are searched between meaning shifts. For tagging the adjective meanings, the semantic types developed to describe Estonian (polysemous) adjectives (Tuulik 2014; Tuulik, Langemets 2016) are used, and for noun meanings, the semantic types of the Estonian noun developed by Margit Langemets (2010) are used. The research method used for analyzing polysemy in the article is of a practical nature and has grown out of real-life lexicographical work.

A total of 13 polysemy patterns emerged in the tactile adjective group. The most common shift was from tactile characteristics to psychological characteristics (in the sense structure of 43 words). Shifts could be observed from pleasant tactile sensations to positive mental characteristics (e.g pehme padi ‘soft pillow’, pehme loomuga ‘soft-natured’) and from unpleasant touch experience to mentally unpleasant experience (okkaline roos ‘thorny rose’, okkaline iseloom ‘thorny character’). The study of systematic polysemy points to a strong link between the domains of tactile touch and feelings.

The lexicographic presentation of polysemous patterns varied. The pattern was represented as: 1) two distinct primary meanings; 2) primary meaning and submeaning(s); 3) a common aggregate meaning; 4) systematic polysemy that appeared in the corpus but was not presented. The analysis showed that lexicographers may perceive and present one and the same pattern in different ways; therefore, familiarity with polysemy patterns associated with the respective semantic type could contribute to a more systematic presentation.

 

Maria Tuulik (b. 1985), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer (Roosi­krantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), maria.tuulik@eki.ee

Keywords: usage-based linguistics, corpus linguistics, language planning, corpus planning, verb government, Estonian

For over a century, attempts have been made in Estonian language planning to standardize the oblique case selection of verbs (traditionally: verb government), but variation persists in actual language use. In this paper we look at the case selection patterns of a number of verbs, with which variation is said to occur without any semantic difference.

We look at the historical process of how corpus planning has decided on the “right” case-selection and compare it to actual language use from 1900–1939 and 2019–2021. Our analysis shows that variation is still present in the 2019–2021 data. A detailed multifactorial analysis of variation between comitative or allative marking of the oblique argument of the verb sarnanema ‘to resemble’ reveals that the most important factor affecting the choice between the two is in fact semantic, which has remained unnoticed by language planners for over a century. Language planners should therefore systematically take into account the results of linguistic research (based on actual language use), and linguists, in turn, should pay attention to variations in Standard Estonian in order to provide new input for language planners.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher, Language Planner (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Liina Lindström (b. 1973), PhD, University of Tartu, Professor of Modern Estonian Lan­guage (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), liina.lindstrom@ut.ee

Keywords: autobiographical writings, modernity, nature, vernacular literarcy

The article looks at nature references in texts written in the 1890s by two men born in the middle of the 19^th century: namely, the autobiographical writings of farmer and school teacher Paulus Paurmann (1850–1903), and the diary of miller Märt Siipsen (1846–1916). Paurmann and Siipsen can be called vernacular literati – despite their poor education they were eager to participate in the modern literary sphere as both readers and writers. Both men depended on nature in their livelihood – this combined with their interest in contemporary literary matters makes them good examples of the spread of modern ideas about nature among the lower social classes. 

The influence of these ideas can manifest in at least three different ways: (1) as an interest in modern scientific ideas; (2) as a wish to shape nature – plant new species, apply new technologies; (3) by using nature (as well as poetic language stemming from nature) to express one’s identity, to position oneself with respect to modern identity markers.

In Siipsen’s text we can see two different ways of positioning oneself in relation to nature: passive (religious) and active (practical). In some passages he states that everything which happens in nature depends on God, whereas in others he describes attempts at designing his surroundings by adding new plants and birds. The relationship between the two remains ambiguous. 

Paurmann has written two autobiographies. The earlier one uses a lot of descriptions of and metaphorical references to nature and its composition adheres to the poetics of sentimental chapbooks; the latter one is written in plain language and barely mentions nature at all. That is to say, references to nature in his writings depend on the chosen poetic language.

In conclusion, we can see that both men have incorporated into their writings certain new ideas about nature that were disseminated in the written discourse at the time. Siipsen mostly describes new ways of designing one’s farmyard, whereas Paurmann turns to poetic uses of nature.

 

Katre Kikas (b. 1981), MA, Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folklore Studies, Researcher (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), katre.kikas@folklore.ee

Keywords: 21st century literature, eco-fiction, citizen science, ornithology

The article compares birdwatchers’ experience of nature with the natural environment as conveyed in literary fiction. The source materials comprise, first of all, interviews conducted with (mostly amateur) Estonian birdwatchers and, secondly, contemporary Estonian and Swedish literary fiction: Maarja Pärtna’s prose poetry collection “The Living City” (Elav linn, 2022), Andrus Kivirähk’s book “Flight to the Moon” (Lend Kuule, 2022), Tõnis Tootsen’s novel “Pâté of the Apes: One Primate’s Thoughts and Memories” (Ahvide pasteet, 2022) and Kerstin Ekman’s novel “The Wolf Run” (Löpa varg, 2021; Estonian translation 2022). The focus is on whether and how the concerns of nature observers relate to anxiety about changes in the natural environment as expressed in contemporary literature. Amateur environmental ­science projects aim to draw attention to concerns about the natural environment and climate change and thereby strive for a smaller personal environmental impact. Eco-fiction, in turn, puts environmental issues into words, setting them into a fathomable, although perhaps altogether unexpected scale: hence, eco-prose and -poesy are essential ways of perceiving that also serve to interpret the ongoing changes.

Environment-oriented literary culture has responded to issues with the natural environment before. Now, too, it can be concluded that environmental concerns have made a forceful entry into literature. All of the above-mentioned authors have found their unique way of conceptualizing our home in an era of environmental crises. Their recently published works tell stories about our surroundings and interpret the present situation; they discuss the anthropocentric viewpoint or depict the human focus from an unexpected perspective; they draw attention to our alien­ation from nature; they reposition the reader and thereby seek solutions to environmental issues. Among other things, they highlight environmentally friendly ways of living and experiencing the world or look at the world through non-human eyes, thus bringing the narrator closer to other forms of being. The writers share with birdwatchers the post-humanist idea of the equality of species as well as a sharp eye for their subject.

 

Elle-Mari Talivee (b. 1974), PhD, Estonian Academy of Sciences, Under and Tuglas ­Literature Centre, Senior Researcher (Väikese Illimari 12, 11623 Tallinn); Tallinn University, Research Fellow, ellemari@utkk.ee

Keywords: Estonian literature, curricula, literary education, Soviet schools, ideology, identity

The article looks at changes in the literature curriculum throughout the Soviet occupation. It discusses the content of the curricula, the ideological context, as well as the proportion of the curriculum dedicated to literary education. Due to the sheer volume of the material available, the article limits itself to mapping out the topic: whether and how the ideological emphases evolved during different periods (Stalinism, the Khrushchev Thaw, the Era of Stagnation); the ratio of Russian (Soviet) to Estonian authors covered in the literary curriculum; the educational system paradoxes involved in literature as a school subject that allows for the expression of certain views.

Three observations are drawn in conclusion.

Firstly, in ideological and party-led education, literature lessons held a special place in Soviet schools. Literature – alongside history – was considered the most important subject for shaping the students’ views.

Secondly, a remarkable portion of the curriculum was allotted to literary education conceived in this manner, to make sure that the mandated authors could be discussed in depth. Without doubt, this involved communist instruction – the intensity of which varied greatly depending on the head of school, the teachers and the decade at hand. However, Estonian literature, especially the literary classics, could still be covered extensively alongside the ideological instruction.

Thirdly, literature lessons evolved into a sphere for the discussion of Estonian nationhood, owing to the fact that the accepted authors represented seminal texts, the examination of which made it possible to also talk about Estonian literary history. In the history of teaching and studying Estonian literature, the Soviet era was particularly notable for its emphasis on literary classics, which undeniably played a crucial role in the preservation of national identity.

The article also notes that Estonian literature largely lost this role in general education schools after Estonia regained its independence.

 

Maarja Vaino (b. 1976), PhD, literary scholar and Director of Tallinn Literary Centre ­(Koidula 12a, 10125 Tallinn), maarja.vaino@gmail.com

Keywords: 1960 Song Festival, exile, Eduard Tubin, cultural relations, splitted society, Soviet influence measures

Khrushchev’s policy of building cultural relations with the West opened up a possibility for communication between Estonians home and abroad in the late 1950s. From the Soviet perspective, this contact was aimed at weakening the anti-Soviet attitudes of refugee organizations and splitting the community that fled to the West. As a consequence of the non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, a portion of the community was determined not to visit their homeland until it was free. Another part, however, did not see much wrong with a trip to their native land. The disagreements and internal divisions of the community inspired the Soviet officials to influence the refugees in different ways. Making use of people’s homesickness and their wish to see friends and family, a number of people were selected for positive inclusion through cultural contact and other means in order to encourage other refugees to follow their example and change their behaviour and attitudes. The 1960 Song Festival seemed like a perfect opportunity to invite people to visit their homeland. The Festival was also meant to coax the acclaimed conductor and composer Eduard Tubin to visit Estonia.

However, the Song Festival failed to activate communication to the desired degree and Tubin also refused to participate. The manipulation of Tubin, which focused on his professional motivation and connections with former colleagues and acquain­tances, finally bore fruit in December 1961. The Ministry of State Security of the Estonian SSR considered this a breakthrough in changing the attitudes of the exiles, as the “emigrant leaders” reacted to Tubin’s visit with calls to refrain from visiting Estonia, which in turn sowed resentment among those who were looking forward to visiting their homeland and deepened internal contradictions. The debate that erupted around attending the Song Festival in Tallinn as well as Tubin’s trip to Estonia brought into view the fragmentation of the Estonian diaspora, the existential concerns of people living in exile that the Soviet authorities deliberately amplified in order to use them for their benefit through various influence operations.

 

Aigi Rahi-Tamm (b. 1965), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of History and Archaeology, Professor of Archival Studies (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), aigi.rahi-tamm@ut.ee

Keywords: family relationships, life narrative, life writing, personal experience stories, trauma

Recent public debates on family-related issues (What constitutes a traditional family? How widespread is domestic violence? What is the purpose of child protective services?) prompted an examination of these themes from the perspective of people’s personal experience. The article is based on manuscripts of life narratives obtained from the collection of Estonian Life Histories in the Estonian Cultural History Archives (EKM EKLA, f 350). The narratives were written down between 1989 and 2017 and provide a glimpse into the societal changes that took place between the 1930s and the early 21^st century. The favoured narrative techniques and the ways these changed at the end of the 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century also become apparent. The article compares Estonian narratives with Finnish ones. The comparison is aided by similar collection methods used both for Estonian and Finnish stories – these are thematic narratives archived by volunteer correspondents. More specifically, the focus is on generational conflicts present in life narratives.

Family relationships (including conflicts) are revealed in the narratives through the lens chosen by the narrator. It seems that family relationships were overshadowed by political issues in Estonian life stories narrated in the 1990s: the narrators concentrated on descriptions of people’s relationship with the Soviet power, including repressive experiences. In the early 2000s, this perspective receded, allowing more space for descriptions of relationships within the family. Depictions of post-war childhood sometimes suggest that children who grew up separately from their mother due to economic, social or other reasons never developed a close bond with her. In narratives collected in 2017, the narrator often looks at her life experience both as a daughter and a mother. In such cases, the focus of the narrative shifts from the relationship between herself and her mother to the development of the narrator as a person.

The comparison between Finnish and Estonian stories reveals that Finnish families tended to remain silent on difficult circumstances, whereas Estonian narratives emphasized the parents’ ability to explain difficult situations to children. Comparing the stories also pointed to a change in the family structure and functions in the 20^th century: the pre-war family model included the parents and the children, while in wartime and post-war families, the mother had to take on the father’s former responsibilities. In Finnish research, this is addressed through the lens of trauma studies (e.g., the aggressiveness of the exhausted single mother towards her children). In Estonia, the issue is seen through the framework of the impact of political repressions on a person’s life. However, the trauma discourse is also evident in Estonian narratives. That is, if the narrators themselves have used corporal punishment on their own children. In such cases, the focus is not so much on the events that took place as on a perception of changing values.

 

Tiiu Jaago (b. 1960), PhD, Associate Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tiiu.jaago@ut.ee

Keywords: life after death, categories of time, travels in the land of the dead, religious tales

The article presents a comparative historical analysis of fairy tales of the Friends in Life and Death (ATU/SUS 470) plot type, their features and distribution among Belarusians, Russians and Estonians. In the Estonian and Belarusian material, stories of this type are in some cases contaminated with the ATU 470A and 471A types.

We examine differences in the flow of time in the real world and other worlds, and consider the features of the chronotope of fairy tales and the organization of artistic space within them, as well as ways of transition and communication between the worlds.

According to the most common plot of ATU/SUS 470 fairy tales, two friends promise to be guests at each other’s weddings. One of them dies and the living friend invites the dead one to his wedding; however, after receiving a counter-invitation, he finds himself in another world. There he either travels with the deceased friend through his world, where he sees various curiosities and paradoxes, or celebrates at the wedding of the deceased friend. It seems to the living person that he spent several hours with the deceased friend (or with his brother or father in some Estonian versions), but when he returns to his own world, he discovers that decades or centuries have passed on Earth. Most often, after this discovery, the hero dies and turns to dust, but there are some rare Estonian versions where he miraculously restores ­himself and his bride to their original state (and age), after which they get married again.

 

Alena Boganeva (b. 1964), PhD, Yakub Kolas Institute of Linguistics of the Center for the Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Head of the Department of Ethnolinguistics (Surhanava 1, Corpus 2, 220072 Minsk, Belarus), elboganeva@gmail.com

Mare Kõiva (b. 1954), PhD, Estonian Literary Museum, Lead Research Fellow of the Department of Folkloristics, acting head of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian ­Studies (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), mare@folklore.ee

Keywords: rhetoric, „The Anxiety of Influence”, irony, metonymy, metaphor, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man

The inspiration for this article came from Jüri Talvet’s observation that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s „Faust” and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald’s „Kalevipoeg” show some remarkable similarities in their philosophical structure and plot. This article therefore aims to compare these two masterpieces by using Harold Bloom’s and Paul de Man’s understanding of tropes. While allusion and intertextuality studies typically focus on a limited number of similarities between two texts, Bloom’s anxiety of influence theory helps to apprehend both texts as a whole. This objective is achievable with two constraints. Firstly, making such a comparison requires us to widen our understanding of tropes. In this analysis, tropes do not signify limited transfers of meaning (from one word to another), but the full transformation of a text’s meaning. The background to this article lies in the hypothesis that large chunks of ­„Kalevipoeg” can be read as tropes that are derived from the verses of „Faust”. ­Secondly, this kind of analysis cannot focus on the style, genre or semantic nuances of both works, but only on the general picture: the stories and their protagonists. The anxiety of influence theory shows that the change of meaning from one work to another can be described by means of two kinds of tropes: limiting and repeating ones. In this article, the limiting tropes of irony, metonymy and metaphor can be used to depict the change of meaning from „Faust” to „Kalevipoeg”. The story of an intellectual who makes a pact with the devil, seeks absolute love and wishes to accomplish godly deeds becomes a story of a mythically strong hero who has no choice, never finds true love and achieves predestined greatness. According to Bloom, this is only half of the comparison. In a follow-up article, I will show how the repeating tropes of synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis can be used to demonstrate that the fate of these different protagonists is in fact somewhat similar.

 

Tõnis Parksepp (b. 1987), MA, freelance dramatist; University of Tartu, doctoral student at the Institute of Cultural Research (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tonisparksepp@gmail.com

Keywords: semantic types, polysemy, lexicography, lexicology, perception adjectives, corpus linguistics, Estonian

The article aims to identify the patterns of systematic polysemy for Estonian tactile adjectives using semantic types and corpus data. It also discusses the presentation of semantic patterns in a dictionary. This will help to provide a theoretical basis for lexicographers and to align the presentation of adjective polysemy in dictionaries. The dataset for the study consists of 265 tactile adjectives.

The corpus manager and text analysis software Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004, 2014) is used for corpus context analysis. The program allows to observe the collocations of a word based on various statistics, to generate word sketches, and to study words used in similar contexts by means of the thesaurus function. To find the patterns, semantic types are assigned to meanings and similarities are searched between meaning shifts. For tagging the adjective meanings, the semantic types developed to describe Estonian (polysemous) adjectives (Tuulik 2014; Tuulik, Langemets 2016) are used, and for noun meanings, the semantic types of the Estonian noun developed by Margit Langemets (2010) are used. The research method used for analyzing polysemy in the article is of a practical nature and has grown out of real-life lexicographical work.

A total of 13 polysemy patterns emerged in the tactile adjective group. The most common shift was from tactile characteristics to psychological characteristics (in the sense structure of 43 words). Shifts could be observed from pleasant tactile sensations to positive mental characteristics (e.g pehme padi ‘soft pillow’, pehme loomuga ‘soft-natured’) and from unpleasant touch experience to mentally unpleasant experience (okkaline roos ‘thorny rose’, okkaline iseloom ‘thorny character’). The study of systematic polysemy points to a strong link between the domains of tactile touch and feelings.

The lexicographic presentation of polysemous patterns varied. The pattern was represented as: 1) two distinct primary meanings; 2) primary meaning and submeaning(s); 3) a common aggregate meaning; 4) systematic polysemy that appeared in the corpus but was not presented. The analysis showed that lexicographers may perceive and present one and the same pattern in different ways; therefore, familiarity with polysemy patterns associated with the respective semantic type could contribute to a more systematic presentation.

 

Maria Tuulik (b. 1985), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer (Roosi­krantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), maria.tuulik@eki.ee

Keywords: usage-based linguistics, corpus linguistics, language planning, corpus planning, verb government, Estonian

For over a century, attempts have been made in Estonian language planning to standardize the oblique case selection of verbs (traditionally: verb government), but variation persists in actual language use. In this paper we look at the case selection patterns of a number of verbs, with which variation is said to occur without any semantic difference.

We look at the historical process of how corpus planning has decided on the “right” case-selection and compare it to actual language use from 1900–1939 and 2019–2021. Our analysis shows that variation is still present in the 2019–2021 data. A detailed multifactorial analysis of variation between comitative or allative marking of the oblique argument of the verb sarnanema ‘to resemble’ reveals that the most important factor affecting the choice between the two is in fact semantic, which has remained unnoticed by language planners for over a century. Language planners should therefore systematically take into account the results of linguistic research (based on actual language use), and linguists, in turn, should pay attention to variations in Standard Estonian in order to provide new input for language planners.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher, Language Planner (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Liina Lindström (b. 1973), PhD, University of Tartu, Professor of Modern Estonian Lan­guage (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), liina.lindstrom@ut.ee

Keywords: autobiographical writings, modernity, nature, vernacular literarcy

The article looks at nature references in texts written in the 1890s by two men born in the middle of the 19^th century: namely, the autobiographical writings of farmer and school teacher Paulus Paurmann (1850–1903), and the diary of miller Märt Siipsen (1846–1916). Paurmann and Siipsen can be called vernacular literati – despite their poor education they were eager to participate in the modern literary sphere as both readers and writers. Both men depended on nature in their livelihood – this combined with their interest in contemporary literary matters makes them good examples of the spread of modern ideas about nature among the lower social classes. 

The influence of these ideas can manifest in at least three different ways: (1) as an interest in modern scientific ideas; (2) as a wish to shape nature – plant new species, apply new technologies; (3) by using nature (as well as poetic language stemming from nature) to express one’s identity, to position oneself with respect to modern identity markers.

In Siipsen’s text we can see two different ways of positioning oneself in relation to nature: passive (religious) and active (practical). In some passages he states that everything which happens in nature depends on God, whereas in others he describes attempts at designing his surroundings by adding new plants and birds. The relationship between the two remains ambiguous. 

Paurmann has written two autobiographies. The earlier one uses a lot of descriptions of and metaphorical references to nature and its composition adheres to the poetics of sentimental chapbooks; the latter one is written in plain language and barely mentions nature at all. That is to say, references to nature in his writings depend on the chosen poetic language.

In conclusion, we can see that both men have incorporated into their writings certain new ideas about nature that were disseminated in the written discourse at the time. Siipsen mostly describes new ways of designing one’s farmyard, whereas Paurmann turns to poetic uses of nature.

 

Katre Kikas (b. 1981), MA, Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folklore Studies, Researcher (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), katre.kikas@folklore.ee

Keywords: 21st century literature, eco-fiction, citizen science, ornithology

The article compares birdwatchers’ experience of nature with the natural environment as conveyed in literary fiction. The source materials comprise, first of all, interviews conducted with (mostly amateur) Estonian birdwatchers and, secondly, contemporary Estonian and Swedish literary fiction: Maarja Pärtna’s prose poetry collection “The Living City” (Elav linn, 2022), Andrus Kivirähk’s book “Flight to the Moon” (Lend Kuule, 2022), Tõnis Tootsen’s novel “Pâté of the Apes: One Primate’s Thoughts and Memories” (Ahvide pasteet, 2022) and Kerstin Ekman’s novel “The Wolf Run” (Löpa varg, 2021; Estonian translation 2022). The focus is on whether and how the concerns of nature observers relate to anxiety about changes in the natural environment as expressed in contemporary literature. Amateur environmental ­science projects aim to draw attention to concerns about the natural environment and climate change and thereby strive for a smaller personal environmental impact. Eco-fiction, in turn, puts environmental issues into words, setting them into a fathomable, although perhaps altogether unexpected scale: hence, eco-prose and -poesy are essential ways of perceiving that also serve to interpret the ongoing changes.

Environment-oriented literary culture has responded to issues with the natural environment before. Now, too, it can be concluded that environmental concerns have made a forceful entry into literature. All of the above-mentioned authors have found their unique way of conceptualizing our home in an era of environmental crises. Their recently published works tell stories about our surroundings and interpret the present situation; they discuss the anthropocentric viewpoint or depict the human focus from an unexpected perspective; they draw attention to our alien­ation from nature; they reposition the reader and thereby seek solutions to environmental issues. Among other things, they highlight environmentally friendly ways of living and experiencing the world or look at the world through non-human eyes, thus bringing the narrator closer to other forms of being. The writers share with birdwatchers the post-humanist idea of the equality of species as well as a sharp eye for their subject.

 

Elle-Mari Talivee (b. 1974), PhD, Estonian Academy of Sciences, Under and Tuglas ­Literature Centre, Senior Researcher (Väikese Illimari 12, 11623 Tallinn); Tallinn University, Research Fellow, ellemari@utkk.ee

Keywords: Estonian literature, curricula, literary education, Soviet schools, ideology, identity

The article looks at changes in the literature curriculum throughout the Soviet occupation. It discusses the content of the curricula, the ideological context, as well as the proportion of the curriculum dedicated to literary education. Due to the sheer volume of the material available, the article limits itself to mapping out the topic: whether and how the ideological emphases evolved during different periods (Stalinism, the Khrushchev Thaw, the Era of Stagnation); the ratio of Russian (Soviet) to Estonian authors covered in the literary curriculum; the educational system paradoxes involved in literature as a school subject that allows for the expression of certain views.

Three observations are drawn in conclusion.

Firstly, in ideological and party-led education, literature lessons held a special place in Soviet schools. Literature – alongside history – was considered the most important subject for shaping the students’ views.

Secondly, a remarkable portion of the curriculum was allotted to literary education conceived in this manner, to make sure that the mandated authors could be discussed in depth. Without doubt, this involved communist instruction – the intensity of which varied greatly depending on the head of school, the teachers and the decade at hand. However, Estonian literature, especially the literary classics, could still be covered extensively alongside the ideological instruction.

Thirdly, literature lessons evolved into a sphere for the discussion of Estonian nationhood, owing to the fact that the accepted authors represented seminal texts, the examination of which made it possible to also talk about Estonian literary history. In the history of teaching and studying Estonian literature, the Soviet era was particularly notable for its emphasis on literary classics, which undeniably played a crucial role in the preservation of national identity.

The article also notes that Estonian literature largely lost this role in general education schools after Estonia regained its independence.

 

Maarja Vaino (b. 1976), PhD, literary scholar and Director of Tallinn Literary Centre ­(Koidula 12a, 10125 Tallinn), maarja.vaino@gmail.com

Keywords: 1960 Song Festival, exile, Eduard Tubin, cultural relations, splitted society, Soviet influence measures

Khrushchev’s policy of building cultural relations with the West opened up a possibility for communication between Estonians home and abroad in the late 1950s. From the Soviet perspective, this contact was aimed at weakening the anti-Soviet attitudes of refugee organizations and splitting the community that fled to the West. As a consequence of the non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, a portion of the community was determined not to visit their homeland until it was free. Another part, however, did not see much wrong with a trip to their native land. The disagreements and internal divisions of the community inspired the Soviet officials to influence the refugees in different ways. Making use of people’s homesickness and their wish to see friends and family, a number of people were selected for positive inclusion through cultural contact and other means in order to encourage other refugees to follow their example and change their behaviour and attitudes. The 1960 Song Festival seemed like a perfect opportunity to invite people to visit their homeland. The Festival was also meant to coax the acclaimed conductor and composer Eduard Tubin to visit Estonia.

However, the Song Festival failed to activate communication to the desired degree and Tubin also refused to participate. The manipulation of Tubin, which focused on his professional motivation and connections with former colleagues and acquain­tances, finally bore fruit in December 1961. The Ministry of State Security of the Estonian SSR considered this a breakthrough in changing the attitudes of the exiles, as the “emigrant leaders” reacted to Tubin’s visit with calls to refrain from visiting Estonia, which in turn sowed resentment among those who were looking forward to visiting their homeland and deepened internal contradictions. The debate that erupted around attending the Song Festival in Tallinn as well as Tubin’s trip to Estonia brought into view the fragmentation of the Estonian diaspora, the existential concerns of people living in exile that the Soviet authorities deliberately amplified in order to use them for their benefit through various influence operations.

 

Aigi Rahi-Tamm (b. 1965), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of History and Archaeology, Professor of Archival Studies (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), aigi.rahi-tamm@ut.ee

Keywords: family relationships, life narrative, life writing, personal experience stories, trauma

Recent public debates on family-related issues (What constitutes a traditional family? How widespread is domestic violence? What is the purpose of child protective services?) prompted an examination of these themes from the perspective of people’s personal experience. The article is based on manuscripts of life narratives obtained from the collection of Estonian Life Histories in the Estonian Cultural History Archives (EKM EKLA, f 350). The narratives were written down between 1989 and 2017 and provide a glimpse into the societal changes that took place between the 1930s and the early 21^st century. The favoured narrative techniques and the ways these changed at the end of the 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century also become apparent. The article compares Estonian narratives with Finnish ones. The comparison is aided by similar collection methods used both for Estonian and Finnish stories – these are thematic narratives archived by volunteer correspondents. More specifically, the focus is on generational conflicts present in life narratives.

Family relationships (including conflicts) are revealed in the narratives through the lens chosen by the narrator. It seems that family relationships were overshadowed by political issues in Estonian life stories narrated in the 1990s: the narrators concentrated on descriptions of people’s relationship with the Soviet power, including repressive experiences. In the early 2000s, this perspective receded, allowing more space for descriptions of relationships within the family. Depictions of post-war childhood sometimes suggest that children who grew up separately from their mother due to economic, social or other reasons never developed a close bond with her. In narratives collected in 2017, the narrator often looks at her life experience both as a daughter and a mother. In such cases, the focus of the narrative shifts from the relationship between herself and her mother to the development of the narrator as a person.

The comparison between Finnish and Estonian stories reveals that Finnish families tended to remain silent on difficult circumstances, whereas Estonian narratives emphasized the parents’ ability to explain difficult situations to children. Comparing the stories also pointed to a change in the family structure and functions in the 20^th century: the pre-war family model included the parents and the children, while in wartime and post-war families, the mother had to take on the father’s former responsibilities. In Finnish research, this is addressed through the lens of trauma studies (e.g., the aggressiveness of the exhausted single mother towards her children). In Estonia, the issue is seen through the framework of the impact of political repressions on a person’s life. However, the trauma discourse is also evident in Estonian narratives. That is, if the narrators themselves have used corporal punishment on their own children. In such cases, the focus is not so much on the events that took place as on a perception of changing values.

 

Tiiu Jaago (b. 1960), PhD, Associate Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tiiu.jaago@ut.ee

Keywords: life after death, categories of time, travels in the land of the dead, religious tales

The article presents a comparative historical analysis of fairy tales of the Friends in Life and Death (ATU/SUS 470) plot type, their features and distribution among Belarusians, Russians and Estonians. In the Estonian and Belarusian material, stories of this type are in some cases contaminated with the ATU 470A and 471A types.

We examine differences in the flow of time in the real world and other worlds, and consider the features of the chronotope of fairy tales and the organization of artistic space within them, as well as ways of transition and communication between the worlds.

According to the most common plot of ATU/SUS 470 fairy tales, two friends promise to be guests at each other’s weddings. One of them dies and the living friend invites the dead one to his wedding; however, after receiving a counter-invitation, he finds himself in another world. There he either travels with the deceased friend through his world, where he sees various curiosities and paradoxes, or celebrates at the wedding of the deceased friend. It seems to the living person that he spent several hours with the deceased friend (or with his brother or father in some Estonian versions), but when he returns to his own world, he discovers that decades or centuries have passed on Earth. Most often, after this discovery, the hero dies and turns to dust, but there are some rare Estonian versions where he miraculously restores ­himself and his bride to their original state (and age), after which they get married again.

 

Alena Boganeva (b. 1964), PhD, Yakub Kolas Institute of Linguistics of the Center for the Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Head of the Department of Ethnolinguistics (Surhanava 1, Corpus 2, 220072 Minsk, Belarus), elboganeva@gmail.com

Mare Kõiva (b. 1954), PhD, Estonian Literary Museum, Lead Research Fellow of the Department of Folkloristics, acting head of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian ­Studies (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), mare@folklore.ee

Keywords: rhetoric, „The Anxiety of Influence”, irony, metonymy, metaphor, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man

The inspiration for this article came from Jüri Talvet’s observation that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s „Faust” and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald’s „Kalevipoeg” show some remarkable similarities in their philosophical structure and plot. This article therefore aims to compare these two masterpieces by using Harold Bloom’s and Paul de Man’s understanding of tropes. While allusion and intertextuality studies typically focus on a limited number of similarities between two texts, Bloom’s anxiety of influence theory helps to apprehend both texts as a whole. This objective is achievable with two constraints. Firstly, making such a comparison requires us to widen our understanding of tropes. In this analysis, tropes do not signify limited transfers of meaning (from one word to another), but the full transformation of a text’s meaning. The background to this article lies in the hypothesis that large chunks of ­„Kalevipoeg” can be read as tropes that are derived from the verses of „Faust”. ­Secondly, this kind of analysis cannot focus on the style, genre or semantic nuances of both works, but only on the general picture: the stories and their protagonists. The anxiety of influence theory shows that the change of meaning from one work to another can be described by means of two kinds of tropes: limiting and repeating ones. In this article, the limiting tropes of irony, metonymy and metaphor can be used to depict the change of meaning from „Faust” to „Kalevipoeg”. The story of an intellectual who makes a pact with the devil, seeks absolute love and wishes to accomplish godly deeds becomes a story of a mythically strong hero who has no choice, never finds true love and achieves predestined greatness. According to Bloom, this is only half of the comparison. In a follow-up article, I will show how the repeating tropes of synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis can be used to demonstrate that the fate of these different protagonists is in fact somewhat similar.

 

Tõnis Parksepp (b. 1987), MA, freelance dramatist; University of Tartu, doctoral student at the Institute of Cultural Research (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tonisparksepp@gmail.com

Keywords: semantic types, polysemy, lexicography, lexicology, perception adjectives, corpus linguistics, Estonian

The article aims to identify the patterns of systematic polysemy for Estonian tactile adjectives using semantic types and corpus data. It also discusses the presentation of semantic patterns in a dictionary. This will help to provide a theoretical basis for lexicographers and to align the presentation of adjective polysemy in dictionaries. The dataset for the study consists of 265 tactile adjectives.

The corpus manager and text analysis software Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004, 2014) is used for corpus context analysis. The program allows to observe the collocations of a word based on various statistics, to generate word sketches, and to study words used in similar contexts by means of the thesaurus function. To find the patterns, semantic types are assigned to meanings and similarities are searched between meaning shifts. For tagging the adjective meanings, the semantic types developed to describe Estonian (polysemous) adjectives (Tuulik 2014; Tuulik, Langemets 2016) are used, and for noun meanings, the semantic types of the Estonian noun developed by Margit Langemets (2010) are used. The research method used for analyzing polysemy in the article is of a practical nature and has grown out of real-life lexicographical work.

A total of 13 polysemy patterns emerged in the tactile adjective group. The most common shift was from tactile characteristics to psychological characteristics (in the sense structure of 43 words). Shifts could be observed from pleasant tactile sensations to positive mental characteristics (e.g pehme padi ‘soft pillow’, pehme loomuga ‘soft-natured’) and from unpleasant touch experience to mentally unpleasant experience (okkaline roos ‘thorny rose’, okkaline iseloom ‘thorny character’). The study of systematic polysemy points to a strong link between the domains of tactile touch and feelings.

The lexicographic presentation of polysemous patterns varied. The pattern was represented as: 1) two distinct primary meanings; 2) primary meaning and submeaning(s); 3) a common aggregate meaning; 4) systematic polysemy that appeared in the corpus but was not presented. The analysis showed that lexicographers may perceive and present one and the same pattern in different ways; therefore, familiarity with polysemy patterns associated with the respective semantic type could contribute to a more systematic presentation.

 

Maria Tuulik (b. 1985), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer (Roosi­krantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), maria.tuulik@eki.ee

Keywords: usage-based linguistics, corpus linguistics, language planning, corpus planning, verb government, Estonian

For over a century, attempts have been made in Estonian language planning to standardize the oblique case selection of verbs (traditionally: verb government), but variation persists in actual language use. In this paper we look at the case selection patterns of a number of verbs, with which variation is said to occur without any semantic difference.

We look at the historical process of how corpus planning has decided on the “right” case-selection and compare it to actual language use from 1900–1939 and 2019–2021. Our analysis shows that variation is still present in the 2019–2021 data. A detailed multifactorial analysis of variation between comitative or allative marking of the oblique argument of the verb sarnanema ‘to resemble’ reveals that the most important factor affecting the choice between the two is in fact semantic, which has remained unnoticed by language planners for over a century. Language planners should therefore systematically take into account the results of linguistic research (based on actual language use), and linguists, in turn, should pay attention to variations in Standard Estonian in order to provide new input for language planners.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher, Language Planner (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Liina Lindström (b. 1973), PhD, University of Tartu, Professor of Modern Estonian Lan­guage (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), liina.lindstrom@ut.ee

Keywords: autobiographical writings, modernity, nature, vernacular literarcy

The article looks at nature references in texts written in the 1890s by two men born in the middle of the 19^th century: namely, the autobiographical writings of farmer and school teacher Paulus Paurmann (1850–1903), and the diary of miller Märt Siipsen (1846–1916). Paurmann and Siipsen can be called vernacular literati – despite their poor education they were eager to participate in the modern literary sphere as both readers and writers. Both men depended on nature in their livelihood – this combined with their interest in contemporary literary matters makes them good examples of the spread of modern ideas about nature among the lower social classes. 

The influence of these ideas can manifest in at least three different ways: (1) as an interest in modern scientific ideas; (2) as a wish to shape nature – plant new species, apply new technologies; (3) by using nature (as well as poetic language stemming from nature) to express one’s identity, to position oneself with respect to modern identity markers.

In Siipsen’s text we can see two different ways of positioning oneself in relation to nature: passive (religious) and active (practical). In some passages he states that everything which happens in nature depends on God, whereas in others he describes attempts at designing his surroundings by adding new plants and birds. The relationship between the two remains ambiguous. 

Paurmann has written two autobiographies. The earlier one uses a lot of descriptions of and metaphorical references to nature and its composition adheres to the poetics of sentimental chapbooks; the latter one is written in plain language and barely mentions nature at all. That is to say, references to nature in his writings depend on the chosen poetic language.

In conclusion, we can see that both men have incorporated into their writings certain new ideas about nature that were disseminated in the written discourse at the time. Siipsen mostly describes new ways of designing one’s farmyard, whereas Paurmann turns to poetic uses of nature.

 

Katre Kikas (b. 1981), MA, Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folklore Studies, Researcher (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), katre.kikas@folklore.ee

Keywords: 21st century literature, eco-fiction, citizen science, ornithology

The article compares birdwatchers’ experience of nature with the natural environment as conveyed in literary fiction. The source materials comprise, first of all, interviews conducted with (mostly amateur) Estonian birdwatchers and, secondly, contemporary Estonian and Swedish literary fiction: Maarja Pärtna’s prose poetry collection “The Living City” (Elav linn, 2022), Andrus Kivirähk’s book “Flight to the Moon” (Lend Kuule, 2022), Tõnis Tootsen’s novel “Pâté of the Apes: One Primate’s Thoughts and Memories” (Ahvide pasteet, 2022) and Kerstin Ekman’s novel “The Wolf Run” (Löpa varg, 2021; Estonian translation 2022). The focus is on whether and how the concerns of nature observers relate to anxiety about changes in the natural environment as expressed in contemporary literature. Amateur environmental ­science projects aim to draw attention to concerns about the natural environment and climate change and thereby strive for a smaller personal environmental impact. Eco-fiction, in turn, puts environmental issues into words, setting them into a fathomable, although perhaps altogether unexpected scale: hence, eco-prose and -poesy are essential ways of perceiving that also serve to interpret the ongoing changes.

Environment-oriented literary culture has responded to issues with the natural environment before. Now, too, it can be concluded that environmental concerns have made a forceful entry into literature. All of the above-mentioned authors have found their unique way of conceptualizing our home in an era of environmental crises. Their recently published works tell stories about our surroundings and interpret the present situation; they discuss the anthropocentric viewpoint or depict the human focus from an unexpected perspective; they draw attention to our alien­ation from nature; they reposition the reader and thereby seek solutions to environmental issues. Among other things, they highlight environmentally friendly ways of living and experiencing the world or look at the world through non-human eyes, thus bringing the narrator closer to other forms of being. The writers share with birdwatchers the post-humanist idea of the equality of species as well as a sharp eye for their subject.

 

Elle-Mari Talivee (b. 1974), PhD, Estonian Academy of Sciences, Under and Tuglas ­Literature Centre, Senior Researcher (Väikese Illimari 12, 11623 Tallinn); Tallinn University, Research Fellow, ellemari@utkk.ee

Keywords: Estonian literature, curricula, literary education, Soviet schools, ideology, identity

The article looks at changes in the literature curriculum throughout the Soviet occupation. It discusses the content of the curricula, the ideological context, as well as the proportion of the curriculum dedicated to literary education. Due to the sheer volume of the material available, the article limits itself to mapping out the topic: whether and how the ideological emphases evolved during different periods (Stalinism, the Khrushchev Thaw, the Era of Stagnation); the ratio of Russian (Soviet) to Estonian authors covered in the literary curriculum; the educational system paradoxes involved in literature as a school subject that allows for the expression of certain views.

Three observations are drawn in conclusion.

Firstly, in ideological and party-led education, literature lessons held a special place in Soviet schools. Literature – alongside history – was considered the most important subject for shaping the students’ views.

Secondly, a remarkable portion of the curriculum was allotted to literary education conceived in this manner, to make sure that the mandated authors could be discussed in depth. Without doubt, this involved communist instruction – the intensity of which varied greatly depending on the head of school, the teachers and the decade at hand. However, Estonian literature, especially the literary classics, could still be covered extensively alongside the ideological instruction.

Thirdly, literature lessons evolved into a sphere for the discussion of Estonian nationhood, owing to the fact that the accepted authors represented seminal texts, the examination of which made it possible to also talk about Estonian literary history. In the history of teaching and studying Estonian literature, the Soviet era was particularly notable for its emphasis on literary classics, which undeniably played a crucial role in the preservation of national identity.

The article also notes that Estonian literature largely lost this role in general education schools after Estonia regained its independence.

 

Maarja Vaino (b. 1976), PhD, literary scholar and Director of Tallinn Literary Centre ­(Koidula 12a, 10125 Tallinn), maarja.vaino@gmail.com

Keywords: 1960 Song Festival, exile, Eduard Tubin, cultural relations, splitted society, Soviet influence measures

Khrushchev’s policy of building cultural relations with the West opened up a possibility for communication between Estonians home and abroad in the late 1950s. From the Soviet perspective, this contact was aimed at weakening the anti-Soviet attitudes of refugee organizations and splitting the community that fled to the West. As a consequence of the non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, a portion of the community was determined not to visit their homeland until it was free. Another part, however, did not see much wrong with a trip to their native land. The disagreements and internal divisions of the community inspired the Soviet officials to influence the refugees in different ways. Making use of people’s homesickness and their wish to see friends and family, a number of people were selected for positive inclusion through cultural contact and other means in order to encourage other refugees to follow their example and change their behaviour and attitudes. The 1960 Song Festival seemed like a perfect opportunity to invite people to visit their homeland. The Festival was also meant to coax the acclaimed conductor and composer Eduard Tubin to visit Estonia.

However, the Song Festival failed to activate communication to the desired degree and Tubin also refused to participate. The manipulation of Tubin, which focused on his professional motivation and connections with former colleagues and acquain­tances, finally bore fruit in December 1961. The Ministry of State Security of the Estonian SSR considered this a breakthrough in changing the attitudes of the exiles, as the “emigrant leaders” reacted to Tubin’s visit with calls to refrain from visiting Estonia, which in turn sowed resentment among those who were looking forward to visiting their homeland and deepened internal contradictions. The debate that erupted around attending the Song Festival in Tallinn as well as Tubin’s trip to Estonia brought into view the fragmentation of the Estonian diaspora, the existential concerns of people living in exile that the Soviet authorities deliberately amplified in order to use them for their benefit through various influence operations.

 

Aigi Rahi-Tamm (b. 1965), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of History and Archaeology, Professor of Archival Studies (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), aigi.rahi-tamm@ut.ee

Keywords: family relationships, life narrative, life writing, personal experience stories, trauma

Recent public debates on family-related issues (What constitutes a traditional family? How widespread is domestic violence? What is the purpose of child protective services?) prompted an examination of these themes from the perspective of people’s personal experience. The article is based on manuscripts of life narratives obtained from the collection of Estonian Life Histories in the Estonian Cultural History Archives (EKM EKLA, f 350). The narratives were written down between 1989 and 2017 and provide a glimpse into the societal changes that took place between the 1930s and the early 21^st century. The favoured narrative techniques and the ways these changed at the end of the 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century also become apparent. The article compares Estonian narratives with Finnish ones. The comparison is aided by similar collection methods used both for Estonian and Finnish stories – these are thematic narratives archived by volunteer correspondents. More specifically, the focus is on generational conflicts present in life narratives.

Family relationships (including conflicts) are revealed in the narratives through the lens chosen by the narrator. It seems that family relationships were overshadowed by political issues in Estonian life stories narrated in the 1990s: the narrators concentrated on descriptions of people’s relationship with the Soviet power, including repressive experiences. In the early 2000s, this perspective receded, allowing more space for descriptions of relationships within the family. Depictions of post-war childhood sometimes suggest that children who grew up separately from their mother due to economic, social or other reasons never developed a close bond with her. In narratives collected in 2017, the narrator often looks at her life experience both as a daughter and a mother. In such cases, the focus of the narrative shifts from the relationship between herself and her mother to the development of the narrator as a person.

The comparison between Finnish and Estonian stories reveals that Finnish families tended to remain silent on difficult circumstances, whereas Estonian narratives emphasized the parents’ ability to explain difficult situations to children. Comparing the stories also pointed to a change in the family structure and functions in the 20^th century: the pre-war family model included the parents and the children, while in wartime and post-war families, the mother had to take on the father’s former responsibilities. In Finnish research, this is addressed through the lens of trauma studies (e.g., the aggressiveness of the exhausted single mother towards her children). In Estonia, the issue is seen through the framework of the impact of political repressions on a person’s life. However, the trauma discourse is also evident in Estonian narratives. That is, if the narrators themselves have used corporal punishment on their own children. In such cases, the focus is not so much on the events that took place as on a perception of changing values.

 

Tiiu Jaago (b. 1960), PhD, Associate Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tiiu.jaago@ut.ee

Keywords: life after death, categories of time, travels in the land of the dead, religious tales

The article presents a comparative historical analysis of fairy tales of the Friends in Life and Death (ATU/SUS 470) plot type, their features and distribution among Belarusians, Russians and Estonians. In the Estonian and Belarusian material, stories of this type are in some cases contaminated with the ATU 470A and 471A types.

We examine differences in the flow of time in the real world and other worlds, and consider the features of the chronotope of fairy tales and the organization of artistic space within them, as well as ways of transition and communication between the worlds.

According to the most common plot of ATU/SUS 470 fairy tales, two friends promise to be guests at each other’s weddings. One of them dies and the living friend invites the dead one to his wedding; however, after receiving a counter-invitation, he finds himself in another world. There he either travels with the deceased friend through his world, where he sees various curiosities and paradoxes, or celebrates at the wedding of the deceased friend. It seems to the living person that he spent several hours with the deceased friend (or with his brother or father in some Estonian versions), but when he returns to his own world, he discovers that decades or centuries have passed on Earth. Most often, after this discovery, the hero dies and turns to dust, but there are some rare Estonian versions where he miraculously restores ­himself and his bride to their original state (and age), after which they get married again.

 

Alena Boganeva (b. 1964), PhD, Yakub Kolas Institute of Linguistics of the Center for the Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Head of the Department of Ethnolinguistics (Surhanava 1, Corpus 2, 220072 Minsk, Belarus), elboganeva@gmail.com

Mare Kõiva (b. 1954), PhD, Estonian Literary Museum, Lead Research Fellow of the Department of Folkloristics, acting head of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian ­Studies (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), mare@folklore.ee

Keywords: rhetoric, „The Anxiety of Influence”, irony, metonymy, metaphor, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man

The inspiration for this article came from Jüri Talvet’s observation that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s „Faust” and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald’s „Kalevipoeg” show some remarkable similarities in their philosophical structure and plot. This article therefore aims to compare these two masterpieces by using Harold Bloom’s and Paul de Man’s understanding of tropes. While allusion and intertextuality studies typically focus on a limited number of similarities between two texts, Bloom’s anxiety of influence theory helps to apprehend both texts as a whole. This objective is achievable with two constraints. Firstly, making such a comparison requires us to widen our understanding of tropes. In this analysis, tropes do not signify limited transfers of meaning (from one word to another), but the full transformation of a text’s meaning. The background to this article lies in the hypothesis that large chunks of ­„Kalevipoeg” can be read as tropes that are derived from the verses of „Faust”. ­Secondly, this kind of analysis cannot focus on the style, genre or semantic nuances of both works, but only on the general picture: the stories and their protagonists. The anxiety of influence theory shows that the change of meaning from one work to another can be described by means of two kinds of tropes: limiting and repeating ones. In this article, the limiting tropes of irony, metonymy and metaphor can be used to depict the change of meaning from „Faust” to „Kalevipoeg”. The story of an intellectual who makes a pact with the devil, seeks absolute love and wishes to accomplish godly deeds becomes a story of a mythically strong hero who has no choice, never finds true love and achieves predestined greatness. According to Bloom, this is only half of the comparison. In a follow-up article, I will show how the repeating tropes of synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis can be used to demonstrate that the fate of these different protagonists is in fact somewhat similar.

 

Tõnis Parksepp (b. 1987), MA, freelance dramatist; University of Tartu, doctoral student at the Institute of Cultural Research (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tonisparksepp@gmail.com

Keywords: semantic types, polysemy, lexicography, lexicology, perception adjectives, corpus linguistics, Estonian

The article aims to identify the patterns of systematic polysemy for Estonian tactile adjectives using semantic types and corpus data. It also discusses the presentation of semantic patterns in a dictionary. This will help to provide a theoretical basis for lexicographers and to align the presentation of adjective polysemy in dictionaries. The dataset for the study consists of 265 tactile adjectives.

The corpus manager and text analysis software Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004, 2014) is used for corpus context analysis. The program allows to observe the collocations of a word based on various statistics, to generate word sketches, and to study words used in similar contexts by means of the thesaurus function. To find the patterns, semantic types are assigned to meanings and similarities are searched between meaning shifts. For tagging the adjective meanings, the semantic types developed to describe Estonian (polysemous) adjectives (Tuulik 2014; Tuulik, Langemets 2016) are used, and for noun meanings, the semantic types of the Estonian noun developed by Margit Langemets (2010) are used. The research method used for analyzing polysemy in the article is of a practical nature and has grown out of real-life lexicographical work.

A total of 13 polysemy patterns emerged in the tactile adjective group. The most common shift was from tactile characteristics to psychological characteristics (in the sense structure of 43 words). Shifts could be observed from pleasant tactile sensations to positive mental characteristics (e.g pehme padi ‘soft pillow’, pehme loomuga ‘soft-natured’) and from unpleasant touch experience to mentally unpleasant experience (okkaline roos ‘thorny rose’, okkaline iseloom ‘thorny character’). The study of systematic polysemy points to a strong link between the domains of tactile touch and feelings.

The lexicographic presentation of polysemous patterns varied. The pattern was represented as: 1) two distinct primary meanings; 2) primary meaning and submeaning(s); 3) a common aggregate meaning; 4) systematic polysemy that appeared in the corpus but was not presented. The analysis showed that lexicographers may perceive and present one and the same pattern in different ways; therefore, familiarity with polysemy patterns associated with the respective semantic type could contribute to a more systematic presentation.

 

Maria Tuulik (b. 1985), PhD, Institute of the Estonian Language, Lexicographer (Roosi­krantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), maria.tuulik@eki.ee

Keywords: usage-based linguistics, corpus linguistics, language planning, corpus planning, verb government, Estonian

For over a century, attempts have been made in Estonian language planning to standardize the oblique case selection of verbs (traditionally: verb government), but variation persists in actual language use. In this paper we look at the case selection patterns of a number of verbs, with which variation is said to occur without any semantic difference.

We look at the historical process of how corpus planning has decided on the “right” case-selection and compare it to actual language use from 1900–1939 and 2019–2021. Our analysis shows that variation is still present in the 2019–2021 data. A detailed multifactorial analysis of variation between comitative or allative marking of the oblique argument of the verb sarnanema ‘to resemble’ reveals that the most important factor affecting the choice between the two is in fact semantic, which has remained unnoticed by language planners for over a century. Language planners should therefore systematically take into account the results of linguistic research (based on actual language use), and linguists, in turn, should pay attention to variations in Standard Estonian in order to provide new input for language planners.

 

Lydia Risberg (b. 1988), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher, Language Planner (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu); University of Tartu, Doctoral Student, lydia.risberg@eki.ee

Liina Lindström (b. 1973), PhD, University of Tartu, Professor of Modern Estonian Lan­guage (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), liina.lindstrom@ut.ee

Keywords: autobiographical writings, modernity, nature, vernacular literarcy

The article looks at nature references in texts written in the 1890s by two men born in the middle of the 19^th century: namely, the autobiographical writings of farmer and school teacher Paulus Paurmann (1850–1903), and the diary of miller Märt Siipsen (1846–1916). Paurmann and Siipsen can be called vernacular literati – despite their poor education they were eager to participate in the modern literary sphere as both readers and writers. Both men depended on nature in their livelihood – this combined with their interest in contemporary literary matters makes them good examples of the spread of modern ideas about nature among the lower social classes. 

The influence of these ideas can manifest in at least three different ways: (1) as an interest in modern scientific ideas; (2) as a wish to shape nature – plant new species, apply new technologies; (3) by using nature (as well as poetic language stemming from nature) to express one’s identity, to position oneself with respect to modern identity markers.

In Siipsen’s text we can see two different ways of positioning oneself in relation to nature: passive (religious) and active (practical). In some passages he states that everything which happens in nature depends on God, whereas in others he describes attempts at designing his surroundings by adding new plants and birds. The relationship between the two remains ambiguous. 

Paurmann has written two autobiographies. The earlier one uses a lot of descriptions of and metaphorical references to nature and its composition adheres to the poetics of sentimental chapbooks; the latter one is written in plain language and barely mentions nature at all. That is to say, references to nature in his writings depend on the chosen poetic language.

In conclusion, we can see that both men have incorporated into their writings certain new ideas about nature that were disseminated in the written discourse at the time. Siipsen mostly describes new ways of designing one’s farmyard, whereas Paurmann turns to poetic uses of nature.

 

Katre Kikas (b. 1981), MA, Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folklore Studies, Researcher (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), katre.kikas@folklore.ee

Keywords: 21st century literature, eco-fiction, citizen science, ornithology

The article compares birdwatchers’ experience of nature with the natural environment as conveyed in literary fiction. The source materials comprise, first of all, interviews conducted with (mostly amateur) Estonian birdwatchers and, secondly, contemporary Estonian and Swedish literary fiction: Maarja Pärtna’s prose poetry collection “The Living City” (Elav linn, 2022), Andrus Kivirähk’s book “Flight to the Moon” (Lend Kuule, 2022), Tõnis Tootsen’s novel “Pâté of the Apes: One Primate’s Thoughts and Memories” (Ahvide pasteet, 2022) and Kerstin Ekman’s novel “The Wolf Run” (Löpa varg, 2021; Estonian translation 2022). The focus is on whether and how the concerns of nature observers relate to anxiety about changes in the natural environment as expressed in contemporary literature. Amateur environmental ­science projects aim to draw attention to concerns about the natural environment and climate change and thereby strive for a smaller personal environmental impact. Eco-fiction, in turn, puts environmental issues into words, setting them into a fathomable, although perhaps altogether unexpected scale: hence, eco-prose and -poesy are essential ways of perceiving that also serve to interpret the ongoing changes.

Environment-oriented literary culture has responded to issues with the natural environment before. Now, too, it can be concluded that environmental concerns have made a forceful entry into literature. All of the above-mentioned authors have found their unique way of conceptualizing our home in an era of environmental crises. Their recently published works tell stories about our surroundings and interpret the present situation; they discuss the anthropocentric viewpoint or depict the human focus from an unexpected perspective; they draw attention to our alien­ation from nature; they reposition the reader and thereby seek solutions to environmental issues. Among other things, they highlight environmentally friendly ways of living and experiencing the world or look at the world through non-human eyes, thus bringing the narrator closer to other forms of being. The writers share with birdwatchers the post-humanist idea of the equality of species as well as a sharp eye for their subject.

 

Elle-Mari Talivee (b. 1974), PhD, Estonian Academy of Sciences, Under and Tuglas ­Literature Centre, Senior Researcher (Väikese Illimari 12, 11623 Tallinn); Tallinn University, Research Fellow, ellemari@utkk.ee

Keywords: Estonian literature, curricula, literary education, Soviet schools, ideology, identity

The article looks at changes in the literature curriculum throughout the Soviet occupation. It discusses the content of the curricula, the ideological context, as well as the proportion of the curriculum dedicated to literary education. Due to the sheer volume of the material available, the article limits itself to mapping out the topic: whether and how the ideological emphases evolved during different periods (Stalinism, the Khrushchev Thaw, the Era of Stagnation); the ratio of Russian (Soviet) to Estonian authors covered in the literary curriculum; the educational system paradoxes involved in literature as a school subject that allows for the expression of certain views.

Three observations are drawn in conclusion.

Firstly, in ideological and party-led education, literature lessons held a special place in Soviet schools. Literature – alongside history – was considered the most important subject for shaping the students’ views.

Secondly, a remarkable portion of the curriculum was allotted to literary education conceived in this manner, to make sure that the mandated authors could be discussed in depth. Without doubt, this involved communist instruction – the intensity of which varied greatly depending on the head of school, the teachers and the decade at hand. However, Estonian literature, especially the literary classics, could still be covered extensively alongside the ideological instruction.

Thirdly, literature lessons evolved into a sphere for the discussion of Estonian nationhood, owing to the fact that the accepted authors represented seminal texts, the examination of which made it possible to also talk about Estonian literary history. In the history of teaching and studying Estonian literature, the Soviet era was particularly notable for its emphasis on literary classics, which undeniably played a crucial role in the preservation of national identity.

The article also notes that Estonian literature largely lost this role in general education schools after Estonia regained its independence.

 

Maarja Vaino (b. 1976), PhD, literary scholar and Director of Tallinn Literary Centre ­(Koidula 12a, 10125 Tallinn), maarja.vaino@gmail.com

Keywords: 1960 Song Festival, exile, Eduard Tubin, cultural relations, splitted society, Soviet influence measures

Khrushchev’s policy of building cultural relations with the West opened up a possibility for communication between Estonians home and abroad in the late 1950s. From the Soviet perspective, this contact was aimed at weakening the anti-Soviet attitudes of refugee organizations and splitting the community that fled to the West. As a consequence of the non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, a portion of the community was determined not to visit their homeland until it was free. Another part, however, did not see much wrong with a trip to their native land. The disagreements and internal divisions of the community inspired the Soviet officials to influence the refugees in different ways. Making use of people’s homesickness and their wish to see friends and family, a number of people were selected for positive inclusion through cultural contact and other means in order to encourage other refugees to follow their example and change their behaviour and attitudes. The 1960 Song Festival seemed like a perfect opportunity to invite people to visit their homeland. The Festival was also meant to coax the acclaimed conductor and composer Eduard Tubin to visit Estonia.

However, the Song Festival failed to activate communication to the desired degree and Tubin also refused to participate. The manipulation of Tubin, which focused on his professional motivation and connections with former colleagues and acquain­tances, finally bore fruit in December 1961. The Ministry of State Security of the Estonian SSR considered this a breakthrough in changing the attitudes of the exiles, as the “emigrant leaders” reacted to Tubin’s visit with calls to refrain from visiting Estonia, which in turn sowed resentment among those who were looking forward to visiting their homeland and deepened internal contradictions. The debate that erupted around attending the Song Festival in Tallinn as well as Tubin’s trip to Estonia brought into view the fragmentation of the Estonian diaspora, the existential concerns of people living in exile that the Soviet authorities deliberately amplified in order to use them for their benefit through various influence operations.

 

Aigi Rahi-Tamm (b. 1965), PhD, University of Tartu, Institute of History and Archaeology, Professor of Archival Studies (Jakobi 2, 51005 Tartu), aigi.rahi-tamm@ut.ee

Keywords: family relationships, life narrative, life writing, personal experience stories, trauma

Recent public debates on family-related issues (What constitutes a traditional family? How widespread is domestic violence? What is the purpose of child protective services?) prompted an examination of these themes from the perspective of people’s personal experience. The article is based on manuscripts of life narratives obtained from the collection of Estonian Life Histories in the Estonian Cultural History Archives (EKM EKLA, f 350). The narratives were written down between 1989 and 2017 and provide a glimpse into the societal changes that took place between the 1930s and the early 21^st century. The favoured narrative techniques and the ways these changed at the end of the 20^th century and at the beginning of the 21^st century also become apparent. The article compares Estonian narratives with Finnish ones. The comparison is aided by similar collection methods used both for Estonian and Finnish stories – these are thematic narratives archived by volunteer correspondents. More specifically, the focus is on generational conflicts present in life narratives.

Family relationships (including conflicts) are revealed in the narratives through the lens chosen by the narrator. It seems that family relationships were overshadowed by political issues in Estonian life stories narrated in the 1990s: the narrators concentrated on descriptions of people’s relationship with the Soviet power, including repressive experiences. In the early 2000s, this perspective receded, allowing more space for descriptions of relationships within the family. Depictions of post-war childhood sometimes suggest that children who grew up separately from their mother due to economic, social or other reasons never developed a close bond with her. In narratives collected in 2017, the narrator often looks at her life experience both as a daughter and a mother. In such cases, the focus of the narrative shifts from the relationship between herself and her mother to the development of the narrator as a person.

The comparison between Finnish and Estonian stories reveals that Finnish families tended to remain silent on difficult circumstances, whereas Estonian narratives emphasized the parents’ ability to explain difficult situations to children. Comparing the stories also pointed to a change in the family structure and functions in the 20^th century: the pre-war family model included the parents and the children, while in wartime and post-war families, the mother had to take on the father’s former responsibilities. In Finnish research, this is addressed through the lens of trauma studies (e.g., the aggressiveness of the exhausted single mother towards her children). In Estonia, the issue is seen through the framework of the impact of political repressions on a person’s life. However, the trauma discourse is also evident in Estonian narratives. That is, if the narrators themselves have used corporal punishment on their own children. In such cases, the focus is not so much on the events that took place as on a perception of changing values.

 

Tiiu Jaago (b. 1960), PhD, Associate Professor of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tiiu.jaago@ut.ee

Keywords: life after death, categories of time, travels in the land of the dead, religious tales

The article presents a comparative historical analysis of fairy tales of the Friends in Life and Death (ATU/SUS 470) plot type, their features and distribution among Belarusians, Russians and Estonians. In the Estonian and Belarusian material, stories of this type are in some cases contaminated with the ATU 470A and 471A types.

We examine differences in the flow of time in the real world and other worlds, and consider the features of the chronotope of fairy tales and the organization of artistic space within them, as well as ways of transition and communication between the worlds.

According to the most common plot of ATU/SUS 470 fairy tales, two friends promise to be guests at each other’s weddings. One of them dies and the living friend invites the dead one to his wedding; however, after receiving a counter-invitation, he finds himself in another world. There he either travels with the deceased friend through his world, where he sees various curiosities and paradoxes, or celebrates at the wedding of the deceased friend. It seems to the living person that he spent several hours with the deceased friend (or with his brother or father in some Estonian versions), but when he returns to his own world, he discovers that decades or centuries have passed on Earth. Most often, after this discovery, the hero dies and turns to dust, but there are some rare Estonian versions where he miraculously restores ­himself and his bride to their original state (and age), after which they get married again.

 

Alena Boganeva (b. 1964), PhD, Yakub Kolas Institute of Linguistics of the Center for the Belarusian Culture, Language and Literature Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Head of the Department of Ethnolinguistics (Surhanava 1, Corpus 2, 220072 Minsk, Belarus), elboganeva@gmail.com

Mare Kõiva (b. 1954), PhD, Estonian Literary Museum, Lead Research Fellow of the Department of Folkloristics, acting head of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian ­Studies (Vanemuise 42, 51003 Tartu), mare@folklore.ee

Keywords: rhetoric, „The Anxiety of Influence”, irony, metonymy, metaphor, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man

The inspiration for this article came from Jüri Talvet’s observation that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s „Faust” and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald’s „Kalevipoeg” show some remarkable similarities in their philosophical structure and plot. This article therefore aims to compare these two masterpieces by using Harold Bloom’s and Paul de Man’s understanding of tropes. While allusion and intertextuality studies typically focus on a limited number of similarities between two texts, Bloom’s anxiety of influence theory helps to apprehend both texts as a whole. This objective is achievable with two constraints. Firstly, making such a comparison requires us to widen our understanding of tropes. In this analysis, tropes do not signify limited transfers of meaning (from one word to another), but the full transformation of a text’s meaning. The background to this article lies in the hypothesis that large chunks of ­„Kalevipoeg” can be read as tropes that are derived from the verses of „Faust”. ­Secondly, this kind of analysis cannot focus on the style, genre or semantic nuances of both works, but only on the general picture: the stories and their protagonists. The anxiety of influence theory shows that the change of meaning from one work to another can be described by means of two kinds of tropes: limiting and repeating ones. In this article, the limiting tropes of irony, metonymy and metaphor can be used to depict the change of meaning from „Faust” to „Kalevipoeg”. The story of an intellectual who makes a pact with the devil, seeks absolute love and wishes to accomplish godly deeds becomes a story of a mythically strong hero who has no choice, never finds true love and achieves predestined greatness. According to Bloom, this is only half of the comparison. In a follow-up article, I will show how the repeating tropes of synecdoche, hyperbole and metalepsis can be used to demonstrate that the fate of these different protagonists is in fact somewhat similar.

 

Tõnis Parksepp (b. 1987), MA, freelance dramatist; University of Tartu, doctoral student at the Institute of Cultural Research (Ülikooli 16, 51003 Tartu), tonisparksepp@gmail.com

Keywords: semantic types, polysemy, lexicography, lexicology, perception adjectives, corpus linguistics, Estonian

The article aims to identify the patterns of systematic polysemy for Estonian tactile adjectives using semantic types and corpus data. It also discusses the presentation of semantic patterns in a dictionary. This will help to provide a theoretical basis for lexicographers and to align the presentation of adjective polysemy in dictionaries. The dataset for the study consists of 265 tactile adjectives.

The corpus manager and text analysis software Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004, 2014) is used for corpus context analysis. The program allows to observe the collocations of a word based on various statistics, to generate word sketches, and to study words used in similar contexts by means of the thesaurus function. To find the patterns, semantic types are assigned to meanings and similarities are searched between meaning shifts. For tagging the adjective meanings, the semantic types developed to describe Estonian (polysemous) adjectives (Tuulik 2014; Tuulik, Langemets 2016) are used, and for noun meanings, the semantic types of the Estonian noun developed by Margit Langemets (2010) are used. The research method used for analyzing polysemy in the article is of a practical nature and has grown out of real-life lexicographical work.

A total of 13 polysemy patterns emerged in the tactile adjective group. The most common shift was from tactile characteristics to psychological characteristics (in the sense structure of 43 words). Shifts could be observed from pleasant tactile sensations to positive mental characteristics (e.g pehme padi