title: The "Tartu Spirit" Phenomenon in the Russian Cultural Context
reg no: ETF5224
project type: Estonian Science Foundation research grant
subject: 6.7. Literary Science
status: completed
institution: University of Tartu
head of project: Ljubov Kisseljova
duration: 01.01.2002 - 31.12.2003
description: ..The project is connected with one of the most actual trends of contemporary philology, semiotics of culture and cultural anthropology - the research of the cultural space. The aim of the project is the first serious attempt to study the "Tartu Spirit" in the Estonian humanitarian science. The origin of this cultural myth goes back to the first decades of the 19th century when the German university was founded in Tartu. This caused the crossing of three cultural traditions - German, Estonian and Russian in this place. The aim is to reconstruct the phenomenon, to research the mechanisms and ways of its development. It is necessary to describe the mechanisms of the development and the spread of the "Taru text" in the first half of the 19th century and to publish the texts of the cultural workers involved in the process (Zhukovskii, Yazykov, Sollogub, Bulgarin et al.).The results of the project will provide the specialists and the wider audience with much of new information and will give a new perspective for the reflection of the position of Tartu and Estonia in the wider cultural and integration process.
The participants of the project would like to dedicate their research to the 80th anniversary of Prof. Y. Lotman's birthday and to the bicentenary of the reopening of the University of Tartu..

project group
no name institution position  
1.Tatjana FraimanUniversity of Tartulecturer 
2.Ljubov KisseljovaFaculty of PhilosophyProfessor, Head of the Departement of Russian and Slavic Philology 
3.Tatjana KuzovkinaUniversity of Tarturesearcher