L. Lukas

Infants use statistical information in their environment, as well as others’ emotional communication, to understand the intentions of social partners. However, rarely do researchers consider these two sources of social information in tandem. This study assessed 2-year-olds’ attributions of intentionality from non-random sampling events and subsequent discrete emotion reactions. Infants observed an experimenter remove five objects from either the non-random minority (18%) or random majority (82%) of a sample and express either joy, disgust, or sadness after each selection. Two-year-olds inferred the experimenter’s intentionality by giving her the object that she had previously selected when she expressed joy or disgust after non-random sampling events, but not when she expressed sadness or sampled at random. These findings demonstrate that infants use both statistical regularities and discrete emotion communication to infer an agent’s intentions. In particular, the present findings show that 2-year-olds infer that an agent can intentionally select a preferred or an undesired object from a sample as a function of the discrete emotion. Implications for the development of inferring intentionality from statistical sampling events and discrete emotion communication are discussed.

Impelled by a desire to free themselves from the German influence that had dominated the development of Estonian literature, and from the one-sided relation of cultural dependence that had lasted several hundred years, the Young Estonia movement sought to modernize Estonian literature through borrowing from other European literatures, in particular from French, Scandinavian, and Finnish. This article seeks to clarify the relative importance and selection criteria of translations from German literature for the literary field of the Young Estonia era. Further, I seek to elucidate Young Estonia’s contribution to the renewal of these selection criteria in the first, but more importantly the second decade of the 20th century. The long list of translations from German to Estonian at the beginning of the century speaks of the ”light Muse” of German family newspapers, with an admixture of the following: naturalist light fiction with a social theme and social drama; the historical novel (great favourite of the era of historicism), trendy fiction for both feminine and masculine audiences, and an overwhelming proportion of ”Heimatskunst” (literature of local colour). In the first and second decade of the new century, new names appear on the Estonian literary scene that signal a change in taste. For example, naturalist authors (Kretzer, Hauptmann, Halbe, Dehmel) crop up sporadically amidst texts meant for leisure reading. Although the first translations of Nietzsche only appeared in 1901, already in 1902 critics had reason to speak of ”Nietzsche in Estonian literature”. 1910 marked the breakthrough of Viennese modernism in the Estonian literary field (Schnitzler, Altenberg, Bahr). Under the influential protection of the Young Estonians (Suits, Kallas), and published by the Young Estonia Publishing House, Baltic German novellawriter Eduard Keyserling enters the Estonian literary scene. Though ”mass consumption” literature from Germany continued to be disseminated through serialization in Estonian newspapers, thus continuing to mold the taste of the Estonian petite bourgeoisie, Young Estonia’s authors, critics, and publications introduced the Estonian public to new directions and names in German letters. At first the choice of translations did not coincide with Young Estonia’s program of ”art for art’s sake”. Young Estonia’s ideal, symbolist literature was connected in Germany primarily with names such as Rilke, Hofmannsthal, and George. During the Young Estonia era, these writers do not figure significantly in the Estonian literary field, though George emerges as a great model for newer Baltic-German poetry. Translations of these poets do not appear until the 1920s. However, the preparatory work done by Young Estonia should not be underestimated. Due to the circulation of literary influences throughout Europe, it is difficult to ascertain specific influences of German modernism on the authors connected to Young Estonia. The reliance on German sources in the literary criticism of the first decades of the 20th century, Young Estonia included, is striking. A. H. Tammsaare’s reading notes locate the sources of his philosophical foundation and sensibility primarily in German modernism. More generally speaking, Nietzsche’s shaping role is crucial, as was true more generally, both in European and Russian literature; Otto Weininger also had considerable influence on Estonian literature. The elective affinity of Jaan Oks with German expressionism is striking as well –an affinity so early and so spontaneous that this is probably not a case of direct influence. The German expressionist avant-garde, which began to define itself through declarations, theses, programs and groupings around 1910, become an important source of impulses in the Estonian literary field in the 1920s, especially through the mediation of Marie Under.

Teesid: Artikkel käsitleb maailmakirjanduse mõiste mahu ja sisu muutumist alates selle esilekerkimisest 19. sajandi algupoolel kuni tänapäeva käsitlusviisideni ja dilemmadeni, mille ees seisab võrdlev kirjandusteadus – distsipliin, mis peab maailmakirjandust oma uurimisobjektiks. Juttu tuleb ka väikese kirjanduse spetsiifilisest suhestumisest maailmakirjandusega ning maailmakirjanduse uurimisest ja õpetamisest Tartu ülikoolis alates selle rajamisest 1632 kuni eriala institutsionaliseerumiseni taasiseseisvunud Eestis – maailmakirjanduse õppetoolina. In the current era of globalization when the borders of national literature have become exceedingly vulnerable, cultural identities more and more hybrid and the term world literature is applied to global translations into English, a comparative literary scholar might ask a question: would it be possible to perceive of a literary world analogously to the world of music? Would it be possible that as Bach does not need to be interpreted within the context of German music or Pärt within the context of Estonian music, works of literature relate to each other within the global field of literature and are no longer related to their linguistic and cultural contexts? In order to come to a „bigger picture“, to achieve a more extensive level of generalization, might it be possible to give up the linguistic, historical and cultural contextualization of works of literature? What would a small literature win or lose in such situation? In the present article the concept of world literature and its’ historical conditions – as an object of comparative literary studies – will be explained using the example of Estonian literature. In order to do so, an overview of the history of comparative literary studies at the University of Tartu will be provided. At the University of Tartu, the study of comparative literature was initiated much earlier than systematic study of Estonian literature or its’ appearance on the horizon of world literature. Thereby the ’home’ (or ’homelessness’) of the history of comparative literature history and its re-positionings in different time periods will be analyzed. Having roots in the studies of rhetoric and poetics in the Academia Gustaviana founded in 1632, comparative literary history in the German-language Kayserliche Universität zu Dorpat (re-established in 1802) was initially a topic for professors of classical philology, while shortly after moving under the lectureship of German language and then, during the period of Russification, to the department of Russian language and literature. Beginning in 1904, comparative literature was affiliated with the chairs of Latvian and Estonian, where it developed as a modern disciple in the Estonian-language University of Tartu at the time of Professor Gustav Suits in the 1920s. The Soviet period formally maintained the position of world literature in relation to the Estonian literary canon under the label of ’foreign literature’, but the notion of foreign literature narrowed, being limited to those works of the established literary canon of the West that were considered ’progressive’ by the Marxist ideology. ’Foreign literature’, in particular its relationship with Estonian literature was under ideological pressure to the extent that it was more rational to deal with it as a closed phenomenon boiling in its own juices. At the same time Russian literature was pushed to the fore. Its influence and role in the development of Estonian literature had to be emphasized. However, it was precisely Russian philology where Tartu literary studies was given an impulse that gave an impetus to several disciples in Tartu as well as elsewhere, while also creating a completely new field – semiotics. The theory of periphery as an area, where semiotic processes accelerate and the creative and dialogical function of borders developed in Tartu by Juri Lotman, explains a great deal about the history of Comparative Literature in Tartu: the peripheral location of Tartu, its changing identity turns out to be the crossroad and meeting point of diverse cultures. This has facilitated comparative approach to cultures and view comparison as the only possible methodology of literary studies. At the periphery the perception of borders sharpens, and this exactly is the field of Comparative Literature.