Damiano Rebecchini | Università degli Studi di Milano - State University of Milan (Italy) (original) (raw)
Papers by Damiano Rebecchini
Arte tipografica Napoli, 2002
The article analyzes the interpretation given by Marcel Proust of the novel "The Idiot"... more The article analyzes the interpretation given by Marcel Proust of the novel "The Idiot" by Fedor Dostoevsk
Ledizioni eBooks, 2020
The short essay by Yuri Lotman "On the reception of Poor Liza by N.M. Karamzin: A case study (On ... more The short essay by Yuri Lotman "On the reception of Poor Liza by N.M. Karamzin: A case study (On the structure of mass conscience in the 18 th century)", published in 1966, represented an important contribution, especially in terms of methodology, to the development of studies on the history of reading in the Soviet Union 1. In this article, Lotman interprets reading as a form of translation from an artistic language, that used by the author in his work, to that already acquired by the reader before his reading. This way of interpreting reading helped Soviet scholars to recognise that, historically, the author and the reader hardly ever share the same aesthetic code. It furthermore encouraged them to consider the work being read not only as a message that must be interpreted but also as a new language to be learned. By comparing reading to a form of translation, Lotman was proposing to identify all the factors that come into play in the complex process of reading. The literary critic put forward questions such as how has the artistic language of the reader developed? Through which sorts of texts? How competent is he (or she) in the literary genre of the text he (or she) is reading? Which elements of the text can he understand, and which can be misinterpreted, based on the reader's specific artistic language? Finally, how does the work's new language contribute to changing the language already acquired by the reader? As the critic underlines at the end of his essay, since the work being read is a code as well as a message, it could contribute to modifying the reader's aesthetic norms, for example by developing a sensitivity toward the descriptions of natural landscapes that the reader did not possess before. To this aspect, i.e. how reading and art in general can transform their beneficiaries, Lotman was to dedicate several brilliant articles in the following decades 2. The article, first published fifty years ago, appears today more interesting for the questions it poses than for the conclusions it draws. To a certain extent, this can be ascribed to the context in which the article appeared. Lotman's essay tried to create a dialogue between different disciplines, such as social history, book history and semiotics, which were still rigidly separated at that time in the Soviet Union. After decades during which even sociology was unrecognized as an autonomous
The short essay by Yuri Lotman "On the reception of Poor Liza by N.M. Karamzin: A case study (On ... more The short essay by Yuri Lotman "On the reception of Poor Liza by N.M. Karamzin: A case study (On the structure of mass conscience in the 18 th century)", published in 1966, represented an important contribution, especially in terms of methodology, to the development of studies on the history of reading in the Soviet Union 1. In this article, Lotman interprets reading as a form of translation from an artistic language, that used by the author in his work, to that already acquired by the reader before his reading. This way of interpreting reading helped Soviet scholars to recognise that, historically, the author and the reader hardly ever share the same aesthetic code. It furthermore encouraged them to consider the work being read not only as a message that must be interpreted but also as a new language to be learned. By comparing reading to a form of translation, Lotman was proposing to identify all the factors that come into play in the complex process of reading. The literary critic put forward questions such as how has the artistic language of the reader developed? Through which sorts of texts? How competent is he (or she) in the literary genre of the text he (or she) is reading? Which elements of the text can he understand, and which can be misinterpreted, based on the reader's specific artistic language? Finally, how does the work's new language contribute to changing the language already acquired by the reader? As the critic underlines at the end of his essay, since the work being read is a code as well as a message, it could contribute to modifying the reader's aesthetic norms, for example by developing a sensitivity toward the descriptions of natural landscapes that the reader did not possess before. To this aspect, i.e. how reading and art in general can transform their beneficiaries, Lotman was to dedicate several brilliant articles in the following decades 2. The article, first published fifty years ago, appears today more interesting for the questions it poses than for the conclusions it draws. To a certain extent, this can be ascribed to the context in which the article appeared. Lotman's essay tried to create a dialogue between different disciplines, such as social history, book history and semiotics, which were still rigidly separated at that time in the Soviet Union. After decades during which even sociology was unrecognized as an autonomous
The article analyzes the interpretation given by Marcel Proust of the novel "The Idiot"... more The article analyzes the interpretation given by Marcel Proust of the novel "The Idiot" by Fedor Dostoevsk
The article focuses on Tolstoy's attitutude towards his novels during the 60's and 70'... more The article focuses on Tolstoy's attitutude towards his novels during the 60's and 70's of XIX Century. It analyses the reason why he decided not to write novels for a long time after the publication of "Anna Karenina"
Scholars of Russian culture have always paid close attention to texts and their authors, but they... more Scholars of Russian culture have always paid close attention to texts and their authors, but they have often forgotten about the readers. These volumes illuminate encounters between the Russians and their favorite texts, a centuries-long and continent-spanning "love story" that shaped the way people think, feel, and communicate. The fruit of thirty-one specialists' research, Reading Russia represents the first attempt to systematically depict the evolution of reading in Russia from the eighteenth century to the present day. The third volume of Reading Russia considers more recent (and rapid) changes to reading, and focuses on two profoundly transformative moments: the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and the digital revolution of the 1990s. This volume investigates how the political transformations of the early twentieth century and the technological ones from the turn of the twenty-first impacted the tastes, habits, and reading practices of the Russian public. It closely...
Analisi dell'opera di Viktor Sklovskij come critico cinematografico.The article focuses on th... more Analisi dell'opera di Viktor Sklovskij come critico cinematografico.The article focuses on the works written by the prominent Russian scholar Viktor Shklovski dedicated to the Soviet Cinema from the 20's to the 80's of XX Century
Prithvi academic journal, May 15, 2023
Ivan Minaev (1840-1890) was one of the first great Russian Indologists and students of Buddhism. ... more Ivan Minaev (1840-1890) was one of the first great Russian Indologists and students of Buddhism. Between 1874 and 1886, he made three long journeys in which he visited Ceylon, India, Burma and Nepal. Thanks to his profound knowledge of the classic (Sanskrit and Pali) and modern languages of the Indian subcontinent, he had the opportunity not only to read ancient works, but also to meet government and elite figures as well as the people. This paper focuses in particular on Minaev's depiction of Nepal in a series of travel notes such as Ocherki Tsejlona i Indii (Eng. trans. Sketches of Ceylon and India, 1878) and in a number of essays. Aware of the military and ideological clash between England and Russia that was taking place in Central and South Asia, Minaev took an original stance towards the British colonial domination: he supported the need for the Russian government to imitate the British Empire in building important infrastructures (roads, bridges, railways), but, with regard to Nepal, he emphasises the importance of respecting the appalling richness, variety and originality of its languages, religious rites, legends and songs, which are preserved in a much uncontaminated form here than in India.
Scholars of Russian culture have always paid close attention to texts and their authors, but they... more Scholars of Russian culture have always paid close attention to texts and their authors, but they have often forgotten about the readers. These volumes illuminate encounters between the Russians and their favorite texts, a centuries-long and continent-spanning "love story" that shaped the way people think, feel, and communicate. The fruit of thirty-one specialists' research, Reading Russia represents the first attempt to systematically depict the evolution of reading in Russia from the eighteenth century to the present day. The second volume of Reading Russia considers the evolution of reading during the long nineteenth century (1800-1917), particularly in relation to the emergence of new narrative and current affairs publications: novels, on the one hand, and daily newspapers, weekly magazines and thick journals, on the other. The volume examines how economic and social transformations, technological progress and the development of the publishing industry taking place...
Scholars of Russian culture have always paid close attention to texts and their authors, but they... more Scholars of Russian culture have always paid close attention to texts and their authors, but they have often forgotten about the readers. These volumes illuminate encounters between the Russians and their favorite texts, a centuries-long and continent-spanning "love story" that shaped the way people think, feel, and communicate. The fruit of thirty-one specialists' research, Reading Russia represents the first attempt to systematically depict the evolution of reading in Russia from the eighteenth century to the present day. The third volume of Reading Russia considers more recent (and rapid) changes to reading, and focuses on two profoundly transformative moments: the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and the digital revolution of the 1990s. This volume investigates how the political transformations of the early twentieth century and the technological ones from the turn of the twenty-first impacted the tastes, habits, and reading practices of the Russian public. It closely...
Reader, where are you?", wondered, in the mid-1880s, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, one of the ... more Reader, where are you?", wondered, in the mid-1880s, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, one of the Russian writers that paid the most attention to the readership of his time. Saltykov-Shchedrin's call did not go unanswered. Over the past two centuries, various disciplines – from the social sciences to psychology, literary criticism, semiotics, historiography and bibliography
Intervento al Seminario di APICE dedicato al volume di Roger Chartier, "La mano dell’autore,... more Intervento al Seminario di APICE dedicato al volume di Roger Chartier, "La mano dell’autore, la mente dello stampatore. Cultura e scrittura nell’Europa moderna", Universita degli Studi di Milano, 24 maggio 2016.
Slavic Review, 2019
How did the reading material enjoyed by Nicholas I differ from that of one of his stokers? This a... more How did the reading material enjoyed by Nicholas I differ from that of one of his stokers? This article focuses on the novels enjoyed by a broad spectrum of readers at the court of Nicholas I, from the tsar himself and the members of the imperial family to their servants, shedding new light on certain mechanisms of court culture. Based on archival sources such as the loan registers and the correspondence of the tsar's and the palace staff's libraries, this paper shows how, despite social and cultural differences, these two communities of readers actually often ended up reading the same authors and novels. What distinguished them was less their consumption of different texts than the way in which they read and interpreted the same books and, more generally, the different purpose that they attributed to reading. Based on their position at court and what they experienced in the Winter Palace—a political cabinet in which state ideology was discussed, a place in which courtiers f...
“Reader, where are you?”, wondered, in the mid-1880s, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, one of the Russ... more “Reader, where are you?”, wondered, in the mid-1880s, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, one of the Russian writers that paid the most attention to the readership of his time. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s call did not go unanswered. Over the past two centuries, various disciplines – from the social sciences to psychology, literary criticism, semiotics, historiography and bibliography – alternately tried to outline the specific features of the Russian reader and investigate his function in the history of Russian literary civilization. The essays collected in this volume follow in the tradition but, at the same time, present new challenges to the development of the discipline. The contributors, coming from various countries and different cultures (Russia, the US, Italy, France, Britain), discuss the subject of reading in Russia – from the age of Catherine II to the Soviet regime – from various perspectives: from aesthetics to reception, from the analysis of individual or collective practices, to the exploration of the social function of reading, to the spread and evolution of editorial formats. The contributions in this volume return a rich and articulated portrait of a culture made of great readers. Contributors : Rodolphe Baudin (Universite de Strasbourg); Edyta Bojanowska (Rutgers University); Jeffrey Brooks (Johns Hopkins University); Evgeny Dobrenko (University of Sheffield); Robin Feuer Miller (Brandeis University); Oleg Lekmanov (Higher School of Economics, Moscow); Anne Lounsbery (New York University); Damiano Rebecchini (Universita degli Studi di Milano); Abram Reitblat (RGBI – NLO, Moscow); Laura Rossi (Universita degli Studi di Milano); Jon Stone (Franklin & Marshall College); William Mills Todd III (Harvard University); Raffaella Vassena (Universita degli Studi di Milano).
Arte tipografica Napoli, 2002
The article analyzes the interpretation given by Marcel Proust of the novel "The Idiot"... more The article analyzes the interpretation given by Marcel Proust of the novel "The Idiot" by Fedor Dostoevsk
Ledizioni eBooks, 2020
The short essay by Yuri Lotman "On the reception of Poor Liza by N.M. Karamzin: A case study (On ... more The short essay by Yuri Lotman "On the reception of Poor Liza by N.M. Karamzin: A case study (On the structure of mass conscience in the 18 th century)", published in 1966, represented an important contribution, especially in terms of methodology, to the development of studies on the history of reading in the Soviet Union 1. In this article, Lotman interprets reading as a form of translation from an artistic language, that used by the author in his work, to that already acquired by the reader before his reading. This way of interpreting reading helped Soviet scholars to recognise that, historically, the author and the reader hardly ever share the same aesthetic code. It furthermore encouraged them to consider the work being read not only as a message that must be interpreted but also as a new language to be learned. By comparing reading to a form of translation, Lotman was proposing to identify all the factors that come into play in the complex process of reading. The literary critic put forward questions such as how has the artistic language of the reader developed? Through which sorts of texts? How competent is he (or she) in the literary genre of the text he (or she) is reading? Which elements of the text can he understand, and which can be misinterpreted, based on the reader's specific artistic language? Finally, how does the work's new language contribute to changing the language already acquired by the reader? As the critic underlines at the end of his essay, since the work being read is a code as well as a message, it could contribute to modifying the reader's aesthetic norms, for example by developing a sensitivity toward the descriptions of natural landscapes that the reader did not possess before. To this aspect, i.e. how reading and art in general can transform their beneficiaries, Lotman was to dedicate several brilliant articles in the following decades 2. The article, first published fifty years ago, appears today more interesting for the questions it poses than for the conclusions it draws. To a certain extent, this can be ascribed to the context in which the article appeared. Lotman's essay tried to create a dialogue between different disciplines, such as social history, book history and semiotics, which were still rigidly separated at that time in the Soviet Union. After decades during which even sociology was unrecognized as an autonomous
The short essay by Yuri Lotman "On the reception of Poor Liza by N.M. Karamzin: A case study (On ... more The short essay by Yuri Lotman "On the reception of Poor Liza by N.M. Karamzin: A case study (On the structure of mass conscience in the 18 th century)", published in 1966, represented an important contribution, especially in terms of methodology, to the development of studies on the history of reading in the Soviet Union 1. In this article, Lotman interprets reading as a form of translation from an artistic language, that used by the author in his work, to that already acquired by the reader before his reading. This way of interpreting reading helped Soviet scholars to recognise that, historically, the author and the reader hardly ever share the same aesthetic code. It furthermore encouraged them to consider the work being read not only as a message that must be interpreted but also as a new language to be learned. By comparing reading to a form of translation, Lotman was proposing to identify all the factors that come into play in the complex process of reading. The literary critic put forward questions such as how has the artistic language of the reader developed? Through which sorts of texts? How competent is he (or she) in the literary genre of the text he (or she) is reading? Which elements of the text can he understand, and which can be misinterpreted, based on the reader's specific artistic language? Finally, how does the work's new language contribute to changing the language already acquired by the reader? As the critic underlines at the end of his essay, since the work being read is a code as well as a message, it could contribute to modifying the reader's aesthetic norms, for example by developing a sensitivity toward the descriptions of natural landscapes that the reader did not possess before. To this aspect, i.e. how reading and art in general can transform their beneficiaries, Lotman was to dedicate several brilliant articles in the following decades 2. The article, first published fifty years ago, appears today more interesting for the questions it poses than for the conclusions it draws. To a certain extent, this can be ascribed to the context in which the article appeared. Lotman's essay tried to create a dialogue between different disciplines, such as social history, book history and semiotics, which were still rigidly separated at that time in the Soviet Union. After decades during which even sociology was unrecognized as an autonomous
The article analyzes the interpretation given by Marcel Proust of the novel "The Idiot"... more The article analyzes the interpretation given by Marcel Proust of the novel "The Idiot" by Fedor Dostoevsk
The article focuses on Tolstoy's attitutude towards his novels during the 60's and 70'... more The article focuses on Tolstoy's attitutude towards his novels during the 60's and 70's of XIX Century. It analyses the reason why he decided not to write novels for a long time after the publication of "Anna Karenina"
Scholars of Russian culture have always paid close attention to texts and their authors, but they... more Scholars of Russian culture have always paid close attention to texts and their authors, but they have often forgotten about the readers. These volumes illuminate encounters between the Russians and their favorite texts, a centuries-long and continent-spanning "love story" that shaped the way people think, feel, and communicate. The fruit of thirty-one specialists' research, Reading Russia represents the first attempt to systematically depict the evolution of reading in Russia from the eighteenth century to the present day. The third volume of Reading Russia considers more recent (and rapid) changes to reading, and focuses on two profoundly transformative moments: the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and the digital revolution of the 1990s. This volume investigates how the political transformations of the early twentieth century and the technological ones from the turn of the twenty-first impacted the tastes, habits, and reading practices of the Russian public. It closely...
Analisi dell'opera di Viktor Sklovskij come critico cinematografico.The article focuses on th... more Analisi dell'opera di Viktor Sklovskij come critico cinematografico.The article focuses on the works written by the prominent Russian scholar Viktor Shklovski dedicated to the Soviet Cinema from the 20's to the 80's of XX Century
Prithvi academic journal, May 15, 2023
Ivan Minaev (1840-1890) was one of the first great Russian Indologists and students of Buddhism. ... more Ivan Minaev (1840-1890) was one of the first great Russian Indologists and students of Buddhism. Between 1874 and 1886, he made three long journeys in which he visited Ceylon, India, Burma and Nepal. Thanks to his profound knowledge of the classic (Sanskrit and Pali) and modern languages of the Indian subcontinent, he had the opportunity not only to read ancient works, but also to meet government and elite figures as well as the people. This paper focuses in particular on Minaev's depiction of Nepal in a series of travel notes such as Ocherki Tsejlona i Indii (Eng. trans. Sketches of Ceylon and India, 1878) and in a number of essays. Aware of the military and ideological clash between England and Russia that was taking place in Central and South Asia, Minaev took an original stance towards the British colonial domination: he supported the need for the Russian government to imitate the British Empire in building important infrastructures (roads, bridges, railways), but, with regard to Nepal, he emphasises the importance of respecting the appalling richness, variety and originality of its languages, religious rites, legends and songs, which are preserved in a much uncontaminated form here than in India.
Scholars of Russian culture have always paid close attention to texts and their authors, but they... more Scholars of Russian culture have always paid close attention to texts and their authors, but they have often forgotten about the readers. These volumes illuminate encounters between the Russians and their favorite texts, a centuries-long and continent-spanning "love story" that shaped the way people think, feel, and communicate. The fruit of thirty-one specialists' research, Reading Russia represents the first attempt to systematically depict the evolution of reading in Russia from the eighteenth century to the present day. The second volume of Reading Russia considers the evolution of reading during the long nineteenth century (1800-1917), particularly in relation to the emergence of new narrative and current affairs publications: novels, on the one hand, and daily newspapers, weekly magazines and thick journals, on the other. The volume examines how economic and social transformations, technological progress and the development of the publishing industry taking place...
Scholars of Russian culture have always paid close attention to texts and their authors, but they... more Scholars of Russian culture have always paid close attention to texts and their authors, but they have often forgotten about the readers. These volumes illuminate encounters between the Russians and their favorite texts, a centuries-long and continent-spanning "love story" that shaped the way people think, feel, and communicate. The fruit of thirty-one specialists' research, Reading Russia represents the first attempt to systematically depict the evolution of reading in Russia from the eighteenth century to the present day. The third volume of Reading Russia considers more recent (and rapid) changes to reading, and focuses on two profoundly transformative moments: the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and the digital revolution of the 1990s. This volume investigates how the political transformations of the early twentieth century and the technological ones from the turn of the twenty-first impacted the tastes, habits, and reading practices of the Russian public. It closely...
Reader, where are you?", wondered, in the mid-1880s, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, one of the ... more Reader, where are you?", wondered, in the mid-1880s, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, one of the Russian writers that paid the most attention to the readership of his time. Saltykov-Shchedrin's call did not go unanswered. Over the past two centuries, various disciplines – from the social sciences to psychology, literary criticism, semiotics, historiography and bibliography
Intervento al Seminario di APICE dedicato al volume di Roger Chartier, "La mano dell’autore,... more Intervento al Seminario di APICE dedicato al volume di Roger Chartier, "La mano dell’autore, la mente dello stampatore. Cultura e scrittura nell’Europa moderna", Universita degli Studi di Milano, 24 maggio 2016.
Slavic Review, 2019
How did the reading material enjoyed by Nicholas I differ from that of one of his stokers? This a... more How did the reading material enjoyed by Nicholas I differ from that of one of his stokers? This article focuses on the novels enjoyed by a broad spectrum of readers at the court of Nicholas I, from the tsar himself and the members of the imperial family to their servants, shedding new light on certain mechanisms of court culture. Based on archival sources such as the loan registers and the correspondence of the tsar's and the palace staff's libraries, this paper shows how, despite social and cultural differences, these two communities of readers actually often ended up reading the same authors and novels. What distinguished them was less their consumption of different texts than the way in which they read and interpreted the same books and, more generally, the different purpose that they attributed to reading. Based on their position at court and what they experienced in the Winter Palace—a political cabinet in which state ideology was discussed, a place in which courtiers f...
“Reader, where are you?”, wondered, in the mid-1880s, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, one of the Russ... more “Reader, where are you?”, wondered, in the mid-1880s, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, one of the Russian writers that paid the most attention to the readership of his time. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s call did not go unanswered. Over the past two centuries, various disciplines – from the social sciences to psychology, literary criticism, semiotics, historiography and bibliography – alternately tried to outline the specific features of the Russian reader and investigate his function in the history of Russian literary civilization. The essays collected in this volume follow in the tradition but, at the same time, present new challenges to the development of the discipline. The contributors, coming from various countries and different cultures (Russia, the US, Italy, France, Britain), discuss the subject of reading in Russia – from the age of Catherine II to the Soviet regime – from various perspectives: from aesthetics to reception, from the analysis of individual or collective practices, to the exploration of the social function of reading, to the spread and evolution of editorial formats. The contributions in this volume return a rich and articulated portrait of a culture made of great readers. Contributors : Rodolphe Baudin (Universite de Strasbourg); Edyta Bojanowska (Rutgers University); Jeffrey Brooks (Johns Hopkins University); Evgeny Dobrenko (University of Sheffield); Robin Feuer Miller (Brandeis University); Oleg Lekmanov (Higher School of Economics, Moscow); Anne Lounsbery (New York University); Damiano Rebecchini (Universita degli Studi di Milano); Abram Reitblat (RGBI – NLO, Moscow); Laura Rossi (Universita degli Studi di Milano); Jon Stone (Franklin & Marshall College); William Mills Todd III (Harvard University); Raffaella Vassena (Universita degli Studi di Milano).