The concept of "silence"; in contemporary literature and culture
Hugo writes of the "timid, obscure noise, made of darkness", Virgil of the "friendly silence of the mute moon", Dante writes — "the sun is silent". What do fiction writers mean when they write of silence? Of quiet and stillness?
The St Petersburg University Representative Office in Spain cordially invites you to an online lecture 'The concept of "silence" in contemporary literature and culture'. The lecture will be given by Nina Scherbak, candidate of philology.
It should be noted that linguists tend to separate the concepts of silence (molchanie) and the quiet (tishina): silence is a meaningful and intentional refusal to speak, while quietness or stillness is a full participant in the communicative space.
During our meeting we will try to identify the aesthetic techniques used by fiction writers when describing a quiet stillness or silence. We will also discuss the treatment of sound in the works of Silver Age poets and musical instrument motifs in 20th century Russian poetry.
Lecturer
Nina Scherbak, Associate Professor in the Department of English Philology and Cultural Linguistics at St Petersburg University, Master of Arts (the United Kingdom), a writer and screenwriter. She is also a scriptwriter for science television shows, author of fifteen monographs, and books on linguistics, literature, language philosophy, and English literature.
The lecture will be streamed online in Russian with simultaneous translation into Spanish as part of the celebration of the 300th anniversary of SPbU — Russia’s first university.