From Historical Semantics to the Semantics of Cultural Forms

In recent years, the name of Ol'ga Mikhailovna Freidenberg has attracted the attention of scholars in both the Soviet Union and the West. In the Soviet Union, Iu.M. Lotman, an initiator of the Works on Semiotics published by Tartu University, and N.V. Braginskaia, a classicist and folklorist, stimulated renewed academic interest in Freidenberg's ideas on myth, ancient folklore, and literature. In 1973 Lotman published an article titled "O.M. Freidenberg as a Student of Culture," and Braginskaia brought out several fragments from Freidenberg's previously unpublished scholarship and a bibliography of her works.1 Two years later, Freidenberg's major studies, "Introduction to Ancient Folklore Theory (Lectures, 1939-43)" and "Image and Concept" (1945-54) were published under the title The Myth and Literature of Antiquity.