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Paper short abstract

The paper focuses on the co-narrative and dialogic side of family guestbook tradition of Estonia. It looks at the different ways the writers use references to nature to situate themselves and their relation to the host in time and space.

Paper long abstract

The paper focuses on the family guestbook tradition in Estonia. Family guestbooks are volumes kept at homes where friends and relatives leave different texts concerning their visit or their relations to the host at that particular moment or in the past. These works, gradually completed over a long period of time in collaboration with many people, are a kind of hidden archive of writing styles, social relations and societal changes of different periods.

Family guestbooks belong into the sphere of vernacular or everyday literacy – people who write in them use and blend different generic models, style registers and ways to position oneself. There are several possibilities to look at the guestbooks as a site of co-narration. Firstly, we can look at the volumes as a kind of co-authored oevre, created by social circle of one person or household in the course of the time. Secondly, we can look for co-narration and dialogues on the level of single entries or clusters of entries formed around one event; though there are monologic entries that are directed unanimously towards the host, we can also see a dialogic entries that either relate with the other entries on the same page or make meta-commentaries about the guestbook tradition itself. In the centre of my paper are guestbooks of two families from the second part of 20th century and I am especially interested how the writers use references to nature to situate themselves and their relation to the host in time and space.