Aesopian language in Russian literature (modern period)

Abstract of the book "Aesopian Language in Russian Literature (Modern Period)" by Losev L. V.: Aesopian language is a means of bypassing censorship and conveying to the addressee what cannot be said in plain text. Russian literature treated Aesopian language as a sad necessity, so it developed a huge arsenal of allegories: metaphors, hints, anachronisms and parodies. The first published text of the dissertation of Lev Losev, a famous poet and literary scholar, is an excursion into the history of the issue, a detailed classification of "Aesopian" techniques and an analysis of numerous examples from Soviet literature. Among the heroes of this book are Daniil Harms, Yevgeny Schwartz, Arkady Belinkov, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the Strugatsky brothers. The book is preceded by an introductory article by Alexandra Arkhipova (included in the register of foreign agents by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation), who examines Aesopian language from the standpoint of anthropology, folklore studies and the history of the 20th century. Lev Losev (1937–2009) is one of the leading poets of the “philological school”, a literary scholar, memoirist, biographer of Joseph Brodsky, and a teacher of Russian literature at Dartmouth College (USA). Read more…