Voices on Birchbark

Everyday Communication in Medieval Russia
Approx. XXII, 181 Pp., Index Auflage
ISBN: 978-90-04-38940-3
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 43, 212 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 454 g

Reihe: Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics

In Voices on Birchbark Jos Schaeken explores the major role that writing on birchbark – an ephemeral, even ‘throw-away’ form of correspondence and administration – played in the vibrant medieval merchant city of Novgorod and other cities in the Russian Northwest. Birchbark literacy was crucial to the organization of Novgorodian society; it was integrated into a huge variety of activities and had a broad social basis; it was used extensively by the laity, by women as well as men, by villagers as well as landlords.

Voices on Birchbark is the first book-length study of this unique corpus in English. By examining a representative selection of birchbark texts, Jos Schaeken presents fascinating vignettes of daily medieval life and a holistic picture of the pragmatics of communication in pre-modern societies.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Schaeken, Jos

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Schrift, Paläographie, Orthographie
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Textlinguistik, Diskursanalyse, Stilistik
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Soziolinguistik
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Medienwissenschaften Mediengeschichte

Über Autor(innen)

Jos Schaeken, PhD (1962), Leiden University, is Professor of Slavic and Baltic languages and cultural history at that university. He has published several monographs and many articles in the field of Slavic philology, including Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian.