Founded in 1994 and dedicated to analysing different issues in semiotics and application of semiotic access in the analysis of cultural discourses.
Vilniaus universiteto leidykla / Vilnius University Press
Please read the Copyright Notice in Journal Policy.
Copyright (c) 2026 Authors https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
From standard semiotics to today’s commitments. Lecture for a celebration
<span lang="fr-FR" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Lecture given on the 20th of November 2025 at Vilnius University.
Kaip Kęstutis semiotikos mokė: šiek tiek prisiminimų, sapnų, diagnozių ir prognozių
<p class="LITERATUROS-KUNAS" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Dalyvavo: Natalija Arlauskaitė, Elžbieta Banytė, Paulius Jevsejevas, Laurynas Katkus, Taisija Oral, Dalia Satkauskytė, Dainius Vaitiekūnas. <p class="LITERATUROS-KUNAS" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Moderavo Loreta Mačianskaitė.
<span lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">This article examines the conditions of role creation at the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre. It argues that role creation in opera is not only the result of an individual performer’s abilities or artistic choices. It is shaped by a broader set of conditions that includes aesthetic, institutional, and procedural levels. The study is based on the author’s experience of preparing roles at LNOBT between 2022 and 2025. The first part of the article analyses the forms of bodily and vocal expression in opera performances. It shows that at LNOBT the performer’s body is usually shaped according to aesthetic principles that ensure a stable and easily repeatable stage form, while vocal expression remains more dependent on the individual performer’s professional practice. The second part discusses how the performer’s professional status determines their ability to negotiate artistic decisions and working conditions. The third part analyses role creation as the performer’s gradual movement through different theatre spaces. It shows that the more the soloist becomes involved in the collective production process, the more their work is shaped by external demands and the less room remains for individual choice. The study reveals that role creation at LNOBT is shaped by different forms of pressure: the conventions of the opera genre, the power relations of the theatrical field, and the organization of the production process.
Copyright (c) 2026 Paulius Prasauskas https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Gytis Norvilas’s Poem “european litany”: The Dynamics of Text Boundaries and Structure
<p class="ISSN-abst-vidus" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Based on the principles and tools of structural analysis of poetic texts decribed by Juri Lotman, this article examines the poem “european litany through my god and smoke, or infidèle europe (mass for drums, triangle, and six double basses)” of one of the most prominent contemporary Lithuanian poets Gytis Norvilas (from his poetry collection sinking (grimzdimas, 2017)). As part of extensive semiotic studies of Norvilas’s poetry, this analysis outlines yet another facet of Norvilas’s poetic world, while also demonstrating the productivity of Lotman’s semiotics in the interpretation of contemporary poetry. <p class="ISSN-abst-vidus" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">In describing the structural principles of poetic text, Lotman reveals the fluid, dynamic boundaries of a text that produces meaning. They are related to the internal syntagmatics of textual elements which models the artistic space of the text and encompasses the internal relationships within the text and non-textual relations. Based on this, the analysis of the poem focuses on three trajectories of meaning generation: 1) description of a more general model of the artistic world of Norvilas’s poetry, reconstructed from spatial structure and archisemes, which is realized in the structure of the poem “european litany”; 2) examination of the non-textual relations created by the poem’s title and epigraph, which reveal strategies for subverting genres and the meanings they create; 3) analysis of the grammatical structure of the text based on a system of pronouns and the composition of the stanza structure. An analysis of the latter revealed the dialogic nature of the poem’s structure, demonstrating how the author’s point of view is constructed in a complex and indirect manner. The play of genres in the poem manifests itself as deformation of the litany, which transforms the “prayerful” content into a critique of the world being addressed.
Copyright (c) 2025 Authors https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A Poetics of Sensibility in Giedrė Kazlauskaitė’s Poetry (Studies in Contemporary Lithuanian Poetry)
<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">This article, taking the postmodernist aesthetics of the late twentieth century as a point of departure, discusses the transformed language of contemporary poetry, in which ethical sensibility and renewed lyrical intonations become increasingly prominent. Drawing on the principles of close reading and discourse analysis, the poems in Giedrė Kazlauskaitė’s collection <em class="italikas" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Marialė<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;"> are examined on two levels: thematically, with attention to the political and social engagement of the lyrical “I,” as revealed through new interpretations of traditional concepts such as homeland, family, and religion; and rhetorically, through an analysis of the irony characteristic of Kazlauskaitė’s poetry and its lyricism as a direct expression of feelings. The ethical sensibility of the speaking subject, manifested both in thematic concerns and in modes of expression, is associated with one of the tendencies of metamodernism – a value-oriented ethical and emotional perception of the world as a counterbalance to the to the overstimulation of contemporary life.
Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Bodily Self-Reflection in Sigitas Parulskis’s Naked Clothes
<span lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Examining corporeality in Parulskis’s <em class="italikas" lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Naked Clothes<span lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">,<em class="italikas" lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;"> <span lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">we address a problem related to paradigmatic literary corpus analysis: can we reveal the coherence of the text composed of various essays by paying attention to a single thematic isotopy? Analyzing body figures, we combine semiotics and psychoanalysis to explain the connection between the enunciator’s body parts and his affections. Body parts – such as the female cavity and the male “growth” – gain their<em class="italikas" lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;"> <span lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">meaning in relation to individual and collective actors. The analysis revealed that the text, consisting of individual essays, has an integral semantic universe. The text’s coherence is ensured by isotopies such as <em class="italikas" lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">body parts<span lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">, <em class="italikas" lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">movement<span lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">, <em class="italikas" lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">sexuality<span lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">, and their interconnection is elucidated by the psychoanalytic concept of <em class="italikas" lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">symbolic castration<span lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">. This concept expounds the semantic connection between several types of anxieties in Parulskis’s texts: the fear of losing one’s body parts, the anxiety of sexual relationships, and the fear of travelling. Analysis demonstrates that corporeality is articulated not by the <em class="italikas" lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">soul / body<span lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;"> dichotomy, emphasized by Parulskis’s literary critics, but by the semantic category of <em class="italikas" lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">fragmentation / integrity<span lang="en-US" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">. This category is linked to the unsolvable dilemma: whether the integrity of one’s own body can be ensured by being alone or only together with a woman when creating an androgynous whole.
The Semiotic Monad as a Prefiguration of the Window: Trajectories of Theoretical Imagi­nation in Juri Lotman’s Semiotics of Culture
<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">The article addresses the problem of whether the figurative expressions appearing unexpectedly in Juri Lotman’s metalanguage should be seen as integral to his theoretical system rather than incidental. To explore this issue, the study examines two seemingly unrelated descriptions of meaning mechanisms from Lotman’s late period – the semiotic monad (1989) and the window (1992) – which are relatively minor, brief, and appear in his texts from different years. In seeking a meaningful connection between these descriptions, the article aims to conceptualize the semiotic monad from the perspective of figurativity, interpreting its “entrance” and “exit” mechanisms as a prefiguration of the window. The interpretation proceeds in three steps: (1) presenting the structure of the semiotic monad; (2) clarifying the connection between the aforementioned descriptions and situating it within the broader context of Lotman’s spatial mode of thought; (3) discussing how the interpretation of the semiotic monad engages with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s philosophical concept of the “windowless” monad. The study reveals a trajectory of Lotman’s theoretical imagination that moves from abstract reflection on complex semiotic processes toward a more tangible and visually articulated form.
Psychoanalysis and Literature: The Problem of the Discursive Subject
<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">The article examines the concept of the discursive subject in psychoanalytic interpretation of literature. The relevance of the problem is grounded in two contradictory factors: (i) the tendency of classical psychoanalytic literary criticism to focus on the author or the reader as a substitute for the patient, and (ii) the formalist and structuralist assumption that discourse becomes a work of art only when it is enclosed and detached from empirical reality, including both the creator and the perceiver. This situation encourages testing the potential of the psychoanalytic perspective to account for this closure, which, according to Gérard Genette’s system of poetic theory, is associated with the fictionality of the text. For this purpose, the perspectives of three classics of psychoanalysis – Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan – are used to present three approaches to the same work – Giedra Radvilavičiūtė’s essay “Šiąnakt aš miegosiu prie sienos“ (literal translation: “Tonight I Will Sleep by the Wall”). The study concludes that Lacan’s concepts surpass the methodological tools of other theorists in that they enable and even encourage the separation of the discursive subject from the empirical author. And although this is based on a different concept of reality than the one that traditionally figures in studies of essays, documentary literature, and so-called autofiction, it calls for not a suspension, but a new way to raise and resolve the question of the boundary between fiction and reality.
<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">“From emotion to law”, or “From emotional discourse to legal discourse”, the semiotic approach, enriched by its theory of passions, allows us to trace the path that leads from one to the other. Against the backdrop of the current ecological crisis, I first analyse the gradual transformation of the passionate and militant discourse of anger (Greta Thunberg) into an institutionalised discourse, the ultimate form of which is achieved in the legal document (the <em class="italikas" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Paris Climate Agreement<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">, 2015). In a second part, I extend the discussion to a more global reflection on genericity, and I examine, both in terms of enunciative expression and the formal codification of content, the conditions and issues at stake in the transition from passionate, “clutching” and subjective discourse to the “declutching”, objective discourse of law: the instability of the collective, the status of simulacra, the elaboration of enunciative praxis, the syntax of the norm. Through the central motif of the court case, widely the novel depicts this transformative dynamic and the intertwining of the emotional and the legal. I will conclude by illustrating this with the example of the trial at the end of Zola’s <em class="italikas" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">La Bête humaine<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">. Literature, and particularly novels, depict this transformative dynamic and the intertwining of the emotional and the legal through a powerful motif: the trial. I conclude by illustrating this with the example of the trial at the end of Zola’s <em class="italikas" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">La Bête humaine<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">.
Copyright (c) 2024 Authors https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
In Memoriam Professor Kęstutis Nastopka (1940–2024)
The City in a Different Way: Space in the Essay “Rational Decisions” by Giedra Radvilavičiūtė
The article deals with the writing/production of space in Giedra Radvilavičiūtė’s essay “Rational Decisions”. In contemporary (literary) geography, the writing of space presupposes that space is perceived not as an empty container/stage where the action takes place, but as the space of relationships and networks of human and non-human characters which create the relational space or space as a place-event. The understanding of relational space comes from human geography, which also proposes a new ontology of the city, as outlined in Cities: Reimagining the Urban (2002) by Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift. According to these authors, what continously happens in a city is life, made up of countless human and non-human activities, communication, networks and communities. One form of community, they argue, is everyday life itself, in which unpredictable human connections and their effects are realised. The paper argues that, in “Rational Decisions”, the narration creates a new mode of Lithuanian urban literature, in which urban space is written / produced as a place-as-event of everyday life. The concept of ‘domestic disorder’ used in this essay could be one of the concepts sought by the new urban theory to bring research closer to the reality of the contemporary city.
Vilnius Cinematic Spaces: Eitvydas Doškus’ Dialogue with Almantas Grikevičius in Once Upon a Vilnius
This article compares two works of poetic documentary that depict Vilnius: Almantas Grikevičius’ Time Passes Through the City (1966) and Eitvydas Doškus’ Once Upon A Vilnius (2022). Employing a geocritical approach, the analysis investigates the interplay between the city and its cinematic representations. It highlights the thematic and aesthetic dialogue between the two films, contrasting Grikevičius’ modernist vision of Vilnius as a convergence of history and modernity with Doškus’ portrayal of a city in constant evolution, blending local heritage with global influences. The article aims to reveal the historically shifting strategies of Vilnius’ representation and to analyse the city’s resulting imagery and its impact. It argues that both films not only document transformations in Vilnius but also craft a distinctive perception of the city as a dynamic, intertextual, and intermedial space.
Israeli Demonstration Posters: Spatial Semiotics of Silence
Israel’s coalition effort (2023) to introduce a “(judicial) reform” was perceived by many Israelis as endangering Israel’s standing as a democratic state. The salience of silence as a theme and a form in the posters exhibited in the demonstrations supporting and opposing the coalition’s move triggered the examination of the semiotic roles played by silence in those posters and whether this use of silence differed by reform support/opposition. Two-hundred and twenty posters partaking in the demonstrations’ linguistic landscape were examined. Implementing an algorithm based on Ephratt’s (2022) model for identifying different types of silences revealed that fifty six of the posters alluded to one of the six categories of silence (stillness, symptomatic silences, silencing, pauses, the unsaid or verbal silence). These posters served as the data for a qualitative-thematic methodology, iteratively abstracting semiotic roles. Silences and silencing reoccurred as a theme concerning political discourse, particularly the matter of voice. The need for parsimonious use of crucial signantia on posters transformed into a semiotic strategy in which leaving out expected signantia served iconically to communicate absence, conatively activate the observers or express consent, metalinguistically convey the shortage of words, legally circumvent possible charges and create a hiatus that provides soothing qualities, enhancing in-group and out-group tolerance. The differing use of silence in the posters, depending on reform support/opposition, is explained in terms of horror vacui and motivation. Finally, the individual posters, as material texts, did not appear nor function in isolation: they took an active part in producing the demonstrations’ spatial semiotics.
Towards a Chronotopical Analysis of Urban Squares
This research aims to develop semiotic tools for analysing emergent and recently (re)designed urban everyday spaces, an emergent, changing and internally heterogeneous sociocultural phenomenon. Interlinking environmental semiosis of material space, interpretations by users in (inter)actions and textualisation in culture, the framework of chronotopical analysis is proposed and explored, together with broadening it from literary studies to the domain of urban space. Its application is exemplified in the material of recently (re)designed town squares in Estonia, an outcome of a nationwide program to revitalise small towns and develop the appreciation of public space in Estonian culture. The study outlines the framework of chronotopical analysis and demonstrates its potential for the integrative semiotic analysis of the multi-layered and dynamic character of recently designed urban spaces.
Corporeal Spaces in L. S. Černiauskaitė’s “The Jasmin Chamber”
The description of space in Greimas’ classical semiotics is based either on the subject’s narrative program and its relationship with the object of value or on the plastic properties of space, which determine the actor’s way of moving. In both cases, the relationship with space depends on the moving body; however, in literary texts, not only is motion important, but also the perception of space and the feelings it evokes. Usually, in literary criticism, the emotional relationship with space is regarded as a mental representation of the character. The analysis of Laura Sintija Černiauskaitė’s novelette “The Jasmin Chamber” highlights the limitations of this perspective, which assumes a one-sided link between the body and space. In the text, the character establishes a reciprocal bond with the home space. The home possesses corporeal properties, appears active and inviting, and the character functions as a sensitive and responsive body. In the novelette, a homology exists between the architectural structure and the individual body, both of which share the same category: continuous / discontinuous. The analysis of space shows that the characters connect only with family, driven by an unconscious desire for lasting relationships and continuity in their living space. Different characters’ interactions with space uncover the duality of desire: the wish to possess an object of value is intertwined with an unconscious pursuit of intense experiences.