Description of the research

In 2020-2021 the objective of the research academic group "Languages for Describing the Other in Early Modern Europe: Social Contexts and Repertoires of Interpretation" is translating, comparing and carrying out discourse analysis of the sources which shed light on the issues of identification of universal linguistic mechanisms of description of European Other in the early modern time and enable to contextualize of European “ethnographic” knowledge.

Direction and research field – ethnography of Early Modern Times; ethnicity; colonialism; social statuses; British Isles; Ireland; Moscow Kingdom; Balkans; Dalmatia; Istria

Certain similarity of languages for describing overseas and European peripheral territories is assumed to have existed since the discourses were based on the same intellectual resources (Biblical ethnography, Classical ethnography and political theory, medieval political theory). Moreover, these languages could have been interconnected because the same authors wrote about both European and overseas peoples. The novelty of the research project lies in contextualization of early modern ethnographic narratives, identification and consideration of universal mechanisms of construction of the Other and repertories of interpretation, and elaboration on the social contexts which defined these representations.

Early modern European ethnographic discourses attract scholarly interest due to postcolonial turn in historiography which encouraged researchers to historicize modern colonialism and to turn to its early scenarios and discursive practices. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that scholarly literature is mainly dedicated to the images of overseas population. However, the phenomena of internal European expansion and intellectual appropriation of periphery have not been sufficiently examined. These phenomena are connected with early modern colonialism involving not only settlement and governance of territories, but also particular discourses legitimating social order and hierarchy. The purpose of the research project is to bridge this gap.

Among the objectives of the research group there are:

• Comparison of linguistic and textual peculiarities of the examined texts
• Demonstration of the influence of Biblical ethnography, medieval political theory, classical ethnography/political theory on the examined texts and identification of common repertoires of interpretation
• Identification of social and political contexts underlying the examined texts and their comparison