Yuri Lotman

Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman (Russian: , Estonian: Juri Lotman) (28 February

1922 28 October 1993) was a prominent literary
scholar, semiotician, and cultural historian, who worked
at the University of Tartu. He was a member of the
Estonian Academy of Sciences. He was the founder of
the Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School and is considered to
be the rst Soviet structuralist because of his early essay
On the Delimitation of Linguistic and Philological Concepts of Structure (1963) and works on structural poetics.
The number of his printed works exceeds 800 titles; and
his archive (which is now kept at the University of Tallinn
and at the Tartu University Library) which includes his
correspondence with a number of Russian intellectuals,
is immense.

of Russian language and literature of Tartu University

and later became head of the department. In Tartu
he set up his own school known as the Tartu-Moscow
Semiotic School. Among the other members of this
school were such names as Boris Uspensky, Vyacheslav
Ivanov, Vladimir Toporov, Mikhail Gasparov, Alexander
Piatigorsky, Isaak I. Revzin, Georgii Lesskis, Igor Grigorievitch Savostin and others. As a result of their collective work, they established a theoretical framework
around the semiotics of culture.
This school is widely known for its journal Sign Systems
Studies, published by Tartu University Press (formerly in
Russian as " ") and currently the oldest semiotics journal in the world (established in 1964). Lotman studied the theory of culture,
Russian literature, history, semiotics and semiology (general theories of signs and sign systems), semiotics of cinema, arts, literature, robotics, etc. In these elds, Lotman
has been one of the most widely cited authors. His major study in Russian literature was dedicated to Pushkin;
among his most inuential works in semiotics and structuralism are Semiotics of Cinema, Analysis of the Poetic Text and The Structure of the Artistic Text. In
1984, Lotman coined the term semiosphere. In 1991 he
received the Gold Medal of Philology, the highest award
for a philological scholar.[1]

Biography

Yuri Lotman was born in the Jewish intellectual family of

lawyer Mikhail Lotman and Sorbonne-educated dentist
Aleksandra Lotman in Petrograd, Russia. His elder sister
Inna Obraztsova graduated Leningrad Conservatory and
became a composer and lecturer of musical theory, his
younger sister Victoria Lotman was a prominent cardiologist, and his third sister Lidia Lotman was a scholar
of Russian literature of the second half of the 19th cen- Yuri Lotmans wife Zara Mints was also a well-known
tury on sta at the Institute for Russian Literature of the scholar of Russian literature and Tartu professor. They
Russian Academy of Science (Pushkin House) (she lived have three sons:
in Saint-Petersburg).
Mihhail Lotman (born 1952) is professor of semiLotman graduated from secondary school in 1939 with
otics and literary theory at Tallinn University, is acexcellent marks and was admitted to Leningrad State
tive in politics and has served as a member of the EsUniversity without having to pass any exams. There he
tonian Parliament (conservative Res Publica party).
studied philology, which was a choice he made due to
Lidia Lotmans university friends (actually he attended
Grigori Lotman (born 1953) is an artist.
university lectures in philology whilst he was still at
secondary school). His professors at university were
Aleksei Lotman (born 1960) is a biologist, since
the renowned lecturers and academicians Gukovsky,
2006 he has also been a politician and a member
Azadovsky, Tomashevsky and Propp. He was drafted in
of parliament for the Estonian Greens party (20071940 and during World War II served as a radio opera2011).
tor in the artillery. Demobilized from the army in 1946,
he returned to his studies in the university and received
his diploma with distinction in 1950. His rst published 2 Bibliography
research papers focused on Russian literary and social
thought of the 18th and 19th century.
1975. Lotman Jurij M.; Uspenskij B.A.; Ivanov,
Unable to nd an academic position in Leningrad due
to anti-Semitism (he was unable to apply for a PhD
program), Lotman went to Estonia in 1950 and from
1954 began his work as a lecturer at the Department

V.V.; Toporov, V.N. and Pjatigorskij, A.M. 1975.

Theses on the Semiotic Study of Cultures (as Applied to Slavic Texts)". In: Sebeok Thomas A. (ed.),
The Tell-Tale Sign: A Survey of Semiotics. Lisse
1

6
(Netherlands): Peter de Ridder, 5784. ISBN 97890-316-0030-4

Andrews, Edna 2003. Conversations with Lotman:

Cultural Semiotics in Language, Literature, and Cognition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

1976. The content and structure of the concept of

literature. PTL: A Journal for Descriptive Poetics
and Theory of Literature 1(2): 339-356.

Grishakova, Marina, and Silvi Salupere. Theoretical Schools and Circles in the Twentieth-Century
Humanities: Literary Theory, History, Philosophy.
Routledge, 2015.

1977. The Structure of the Artistic Text. Translated from the Russian by Gail Lenho and Ronald
Vroon. (Michigan Slavic Contributions 7.) Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Department of Slavic
Languages and Literatures. ISBN 978-0-93004215-8
1979. The origin of plot in the light of typology.
Poetics Today 1(12), 161184.
1990. Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of
Culture. (Translated by Ann Shukman, introduction
by Umberto Eco.) London & New York: I. B. Tauris
& Co Ltd. xiii+288 p. ISBN 978-1-85043-375-0
2005. On the semiosphere. (Translated by Wilma
Clark) Sign Systems Studies, 33(1): 205229.
2009. Culture and Explosion. (Semiotics, Communication and Cognition 1.) Translated by Wilma Clark,
edited by Marina Grishakova.De Gruyter Mouton.
ISBN 978-3-11-021845-9
2014. Non-Memoirs. Translated and annotated
by Caroline Lemak Brickman, edited by Evgenii
Bershtein, with an afterword by Caroline Lemak
Brickman and Evgenii Bershtein. Dalkey Archive
Press: Champaign, London, Dublin. ISBN 9781564789969.

See also
Philosophy in the Soviet Union
Semiotics
Literary formalism
Semiosphere

5 Further reading

1976. Analysis of the Poetic Text. (Translated by D.

Barton Johnson.) Ann Arbor (Mich.): Ardis. ISBN
978-0-88233-106-5

1976. Semiotics of Cinema. (Transl. by Mark

Suino.) (Michigan Slavic Contributions.) Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
(Russian) ISBN
978-0-930042-13-4

EXTERNAL LINKS

References

[1] http://insop.org/index.php?p=1_8_
Ancient-Medal-Winners

Kull, Kalevi 1999. Towards biosemiotics with Yuri

Lotman. Semiotica 127(1/4): 115131.
Kull, Kalevi 2011. Juri Lotman in English: Bibliography. Sign Systems Studies 39(2/4): 343356. See.
Lepik, Peet 2008. Universals in the Context of Juri
Lotmans Semiotics. (Tartu Semiotics Library 7.)
Tartu: Tartu University Press.
Mandelker, Amy 1994. Semiotizing the sphere: Organicist theory in Lotman, Bakhtin, and Vernadsky. Publications of the Modern Language Association 109(3): 385396.
Shukman, Ann 1977. Literature and Semiotics: A
Study of the Writings of Ju. M. Lotman. Amsterdam:
North Holland.
Waldstein, Maxim 2008. The Soviet Empire of
Signs: A History of the Tartu School of Semiotics.
Saarbrcken: VDM Verlag Dr. Mller.

6 External links
Juri Lotman page at the Semiotics Department of
the University of Tartu
Bibliography of English translated works and
updates to bibliography
Lotmaniana Tartuensia biography, bibliography of
works in Russian and Estonian (Russian), (Estonian)
ELKOST Intl. literary agency - translation rights in
all Lotmans writings
Homepage of the Lotman Institute for Russian and
Soviet Culture at the University of Bochum
Intellectual Biography of Yuri Lotman at the
Gallery of Russian Thinkers (International Society
for Philosophers)
Lotman foundation and scholarship

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