A talk by Prof Simon Franklin about the Russian Language

This talk is about a book that is near to completion on a subject which rather surprisingly seems not to exist. There are lots of histories of Russian culture (culture in Russian) but there is no general history of the culture of Russian no cultural history of the language itself. This history follows the emergence of Russian as a language of culture and explores the changes in how it has been imagined debated disputed and manipulated in response to changing cultural fashions political circumstances and technological means. The story begins in the late 17th century before there was any formal notion of what Russian was (no printed grammars no dictionaries no courses of study) and it continues down to the present.

Simon Franklin is a professor of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge UK and fellow of Clare College.

Learn more about the event by clicking the “buy ticket” button.