Yearbook of the Society of 18th Century Studies in Southeastern Europe, 2024
This article presents a dual perspective toward the question of appropriation of sources, used fo... more This article presents a dual perspective toward the question of appropriation of sources, used for writing the treatise “System and Structure of Muhammadan Religion”. On the one hand, it regards Dimitrie Cantemir’s explicit declaration of acquiring certain sources and lacking others as a carte blanche to deploy a discursive strategy that points out a lot of Ancient, Christian and Islamic authors without properly referencing their writings. On the other hand, the article pays attention to the way the Bulgarian translator Sofroniy Vrachanski deals with his source, namely, when, how and why he translated Dimitrie Cantemir’s treatise. The mixture and reverberation of echoing voices will be illustrated by a case study on the introduction of the section “On Heresies” from the sixth book of the treatise. Even if he had adopted Paul Rycaut’s “The History of the Present State of the Ottoman Empire” as a major source for his own study, Cantemir included original content, such as the intro to the section “On Heresies”. The case study displays both Cantemir’s utilization of sources and his discursive strategy. He omitted Paul Rycaut’s name and structured his arguments against heresies based on the Aristotelian principle of non-contradiction, Augustine’s notion of the nature of evil, Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” together with quotations from the Scripture. In the subsequent translation by Sofroniy Vrachanski the arguments were kept intact, yet the references to ancient sources diminished. In a kind of reciprocal fashion Sofroniy Vrachanski omitted Dimitrie Cantemir’s name as the original author of the work.
Хоризонти на словото. Сборник в чест на 80-годишнината на проф. Кирил Топалов, 2023
The essay (in Bulgarian) discusses two of Sofroniy Vrachanski’s writings, compiled in the volume ... more The essay (in Bulgarian) discusses two of Sofroniy Vrachanski’s writings, compiled in the volume “Kniga za trite religii” (The Book on Three Religions”), written in Bucharest in 1805. The main thesis statement is that between the translation of Dimitrie Kantemir’s treatise “Kniga sistima i religiya hi” and the original autobiography “Zhitie i stradaniya greshnago Sofroniya” exist formal and thematic convergencies on the basis of a common appeal agains conversion. The first part of the essay presents the two texts at question within their original manuscript “Kniga za trite religii”, and the second provides examples to illustrate the above mentioned formal and thematic resemblances. The essay pays tribute to Kiril Topalov’s observations on Sofroniy Vrachanski’s autobiography
Europe and the Orient: Past Encounters, Heritage, Present-Day Interactions, 2022
The Enlightenment tendency toward integration of heightened sentiments into self-reflexive texts ... more The Enlightenment tendency toward integration of heightened sentiments into self-reflexive texts reached the Bulgarians during a period of major political and intellectual shift, known as “the National Revival”. My study on the Bulgarian letter-writing manuals from the 18th and 19th c. illustrates the appropriation of this tendency into the local context. The manuals contained instructions about the strength and the propriety of the emotional content in a letter according to its purpose and recipient. Over the period they experienced several transformations. From handwritten manuscripts that were used mainly by the clergy they turned to printed textbooks, which assisted business correspondence and helped articulating intimacy in the private realm. In the course of time the epistolarity began to be associated with ingenuity. The implications of the techniques of articulation of emotions from the manuals to the actual correspondence were associated with the birth of modern literary subjectivity, and more specifically of the gendered literary subjectivity. Letter-writing, as a type of literary activity that was designated to women in the Bulgarian patriarchal society, turned to a policy of self-assertion for women writers and intellectuals. Their letters displayed their emotions only in private circles of their readers, yet letter-writing helped their public presence and initiative to publish their own texts.
In the course of the nineteenth-century the Bulgarian society went through several decisive steps... more In the course of the nineteenth-century the Bulgarian society went through several decisive steps towards its modernization. Susceptible to influences from their neighbor communities in the Ottoman Empire and from Western Europe, Bulgarians embraced new modes of consumption, lifestyle and reading habits that were regarded as part of a foreign civilizational model. The discussion on the adaptation of the imported foreign lifestyle practices reverberates on the pages of the first Bulgarian journals for children, which appeared in the early 1870s and diversified in numbers, topics, and audiences towards the end of the nineteenth-century. While making an overview of their general positioning in the Ottoman and Bulgarian public space, this article intends to entail a complex comparative approach of the exploration of civilization, childhood and consumerism on their pages.
There are several ways to study the connection between women and nationalism in the Ottoman 19th ... more There are several ways to study the connection between women and nationalism in the Ottoman 19th c. One of them is to integrate the story of the birth of the women’s movements within the grand narrative of the evolvement of the national idea among the different communities in the Ottoman Empire. Another is to revise the existing narrations and figurations about “the woman” as a metonymy of the nation and to offer alternative sources, terms and approaches to the topic. Yet another way is to introduce a comparative historical perspective between the discourses on emancipation among the different communities in the late Ottoman period. The last strategy is a step towards enrichment of the field of Southeast European women’s history, which until recently has been regarded only through the narrow scope of the lenses of the nationalist historiography.
The history of the Bulgarian women's organizations and practices within the urban structure o... more The history of the Bulgarian women's organizations and practices within the urban structure of the Romanian monarchy of the late 19th century has been rarely investigated. Furthermore, a lot can be done with respect to the multiethnic context and the parallel tendencies of emancipation between Bulgarians and Romanians during that historical period. The biographies of several women writers or activists1 have been taken into consideration by Bulgarian literary historians, yet the involvement of women in communal and cultural activities has been just sketched in the work of the several scholars.2 Their public presence is indicative of some general tendencies of the late Ottoman period when most of the Balkan territories fought for their independence. The evolvement of the nationalistic project required the mobilization of all Bulgarians, regardless of location, class, gender or age. The growing literacy among the population and especially the education of women became a premise for...
The name of Rayna Knyaginja is one of the few women’s names in the mainstream Bulgarian history a... more The name of Rayna Knyaginja is one of the few women’s names in the mainstream Bulgarian history about the Bulgarian’s movement for national independence. The goal of this text is to explain the mechanisms of myth-making that reserve a special place for this woman writer in the national history. She is the first Bulgarian woman writer of autobiography, and it is debatable if her own voice outspeaks that of the national grand narrative, that in the course of one century has created her glorious image of a woman, who is devoted to her nation’s struggle for independence from the Ottoman rule. The name Rayna Knjaginja means Queen Rayna, but this woman does not have a royal origin. She was just a teacher in a provincial town on the South of the Balkan mountain. Her real name was Rayna Popgeorgieva (1856-1917) and soon after she became a teacher at the women’s school of Panagurishe, she joined the conspiracy for the preparation of what was later called ‘the bloody April revolt of 1876’. She was ‘inaugurated’ a Queen for embroidering the flag of the revolt and for riding a horse next to the chief of the rebels. Later, after the failure of the revolt, she was imprisoned, interrogated and tortured and merely escaped her death because of the support she got from the representatives of the foreign consulates in the Ottoman empire. A year after these events, she put on paper her life-story, entitled “The autobiography of the Bulgarian teacher Rayna Popgeorgieva, called by the Turks the Bulgarian Queen Rayna” (1877). Besides the autobiography as means for self-creation there are other premises for the creation of the myth of Queen Rayna. The Bulgarian literary history of the mid 19th c. reminds us of a sentimental novel and a drama, which promoted the character of a medieval Bulgarian queen Rayna who, according to the plot of those literary pieces, was part of the Bulgarian royal history from the 11th c. Literature helped in the creation of the invariant of the charismatic woman-leader whose realistic version became the provincial school teacher with the same first name – Rayna.
Chapter 4 Imaginary Geographies: Border-places and'Home' in the Narratives of Migrant W... more Chapter 4 Imaginary Geographies: Border-places and'Home' in the Narratives of Migrant Women Nadejda Alexandrova and Dawn Lyon This is another interesting question, the question of the home. Well, where does one feel at home? What is home? Is this a geographical ...
Gewährt wird ein nicht exklusives, nicht übertragbares, persönliches und beschränktes Recht auf N... more Gewährt wird ein nicht exklusives, nicht übertragbares, persönliches und beschränktes Recht auf Nutzung dieses Dokuments. Dieses Dokument ist ausschließlich für den persönlichen, nicht-kommerziellen Gebrauch bestimmt. Die Nutzung stellt keine Übertragung des Eigentumsrechts an diesem Dokument dar und gilt vorbehaltlich der folgenden Einschränkungen: Auf sämtlichen Kopien dieses Dokuments müssen alle Urheberrechtshinweise und sonstigen Hinweise auf gesetzlichen Schutz beibehalten werden. Sie dürfen dieses Dokument nicht in irgendeiner Weise abändern, noch dürfen Sie dieses Dokument für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, aufführen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. We grant a non-exclusive, non-transferable, individual and limited right to using this document. This document is solely intended for your personal, non-commercial use. Use of this document does not include any transfer of property rights and it is conditional to the following lim...
Daniela Haarmann / Konrad Petrovszky (eds.), Language and Society in 18th Century South Eastern Europe, Yearbook of the Society for 18th Century Studies on South Eastern Europe 3 , 2020
Based on Sofroniy Vrachanski’s idiolect, this article addresses the linguistic heterogeneity of t... more Based on Sofroniy Vrachanski’s idiolect, this article addresses the linguistic heterogeneity of the Bulgarian language in the 18th century. First, it presents the overall educational and linguistic context in Bulgarian lands under Ottoman rule in the 18th century. It then discusses the three-component structure of written Bulgarian with elements of Middle Bulgarian, (New) Church Slavonic, and vernacular-based literary language. The article pays particular attention to the linguistic inventory of vernacular-based literary language in which Turkisms existed in parallel to Ottomanisms. In the final part of this article, several examples of Sofroniy Vrachanski’s written practice illustrate how cultural entanglements between different communities who lived under Ottoman rule contributed to the formation of modern national languages.
SPRE PĂMÂNTUL FĂGĂDUINȚEI, ÎNTRE BALCANI ȘI BUGEAC Omagiu Doamnei Profesoare Elena Siupiur la împlinirea vârstei de 80 de ani Editori: DANIEL CAIN, ANETA MIHAYLOVA, ROUMIANA L. STANTCHEVA și ANDREI TIMOTIN ED., 2020
CURIOSITY, LOVE AND STRUGGLE: TAKING A STEAMSHIP BETWEEN THE
BULGARIAN AND THE ROMANIAN COASTS OF... more CURIOSITY, LOVE AND STRUGGLE: TAKING A STEAMSHIP BETWEEN THE BULGARIAN AND THE ROMANIAN COASTS OF THE DANUBE RIVER (in Bulgarian) During the 19th century, the connections and interactions of the Bulgarians in the territory on the north of Danube intensified immensely due to the general wave of modernization that started transforming the political and cultural climate in the Ottoman territories. Steamships can be regarded as one of those vehicles that not only transported people and goods along the river but also became an arena of social interactions, quite indicative for the willingness of Bulgarians to embrace Western ideas of travel, progress and freedom. This article will lean on the work of the Romanian scholar Elena Siupiur in order to distinguish the connections that certain Bulgarians established in Romania, thus allowing for a mobility of intellectual ideas between representatives of the two nations. Further, it will discuss the space on steamships as a meeting point between diverse and adventurous people who later became role models for Bulgarian national culture and literature. The article will highlight episodes from several case studies, which present Bulgarian travelers as driven by curiosity, social engagement, romance and desire to struggle for freedom. The trips of Bacho Kiro Petrov, Todor Ikonomov, Ekaterina Vassileva and Hristo Botev correspond to the above-mentioned attitudes on board the steamships.
Книгите като събития в Европа и Османската империя (XVII-XIX в.), 2020
Resume in English:
The article presents the literary life of Genevieve de Brabant in the Bulgari... more Resume in English: The article presents the literary life of Genevieve de Brabant in the Bulgarian culture as a three-act play of reception of the story in the Bulgarian context during the Tanzimat era. Following Alain Badiou’s aesthetic perspective about theater as creating a necessary condition for the eventful enacting of notions, my study discovers the origins of the plot about suffering Genevieve and its appearance as a play and as a novella in the period when Bulgarians were still under Ottoman rule. The first part of the study connects the Western motive of Genevieve with а old religious one. It is the motive about “maiden without hands, saved by Holy Mary”. It was widespread in Bulgarian manuscripts and printed versions prior to the appearance it its foreign sister-motive, that of Genevieve. The second part of the article describes the changes that occurred during the translation of the German and French versions of Genevieve de Brabant by Christoph von Schmidt to Bulgarian. “Suffering Genevieve” is one of the first plays ever staged in Bulgaria and definitely a most favorite one by the spectators. The third “act” of my study describes the way a fictional version of the play of “Genevieve de Brabant” was included in the first Bulgarian modern novel – “Under the Yoke” by Ivan Vazov. In a Badiouan sense the amateur performance is something more than just a theater play. In the novel it functions as an intended gesture of emancipation with political implications for a bigger event - the liberation of Bulgaria.
Yearbook of the Society of 18th Century Studies in Southeastern Europe, 2024
This article presents a dual perspective toward the question of appropriation of sources, used fo... more This article presents a dual perspective toward the question of appropriation of sources, used for writing the treatise “System and Structure of Muhammadan Religion”. On the one hand, it regards Dimitrie Cantemir’s explicit declaration of acquiring certain sources and lacking others as a carte blanche to deploy a discursive strategy that points out a lot of Ancient, Christian and Islamic authors without properly referencing their writings. On the other hand, the article pays attention to the way the Bulgarian translator Sofroniy Vrachanski deals with his source, namely, when, how and why he translated Dimitrie Cantemir’s treatise. The mixture and reverberation of echoing voices will be illustrated by a case study on the introduction of the section “On Heresies” from the sixth book of the treatise. Even if he had adopted Paul Rycaut’s “The History of the Present State of the Ottoman Empire” as a major source for his own study, Cantemir included original content, such as the intro to the section “On Heresies”. The case study displays both Cantemir’s utilization of sources and his discursive strategy. He omitted Paul Rycaut’s name and structured his arguments against heresies based on the Aristotelian principle of non-contradiction, Augustine’s notion of the nature of evil, Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” together with quotations from the Scripture. In the subsequent translation by Sofroniy Vrachanski the arguments were kept intact, yet the references to ancient sources diminished. In a kind of reciprocal fashion Sofroniy Vrachanski omitted Dimitrie Cantemir’s name as the original author of the work.
Хоризонти на словото. Сборник в чест на 80-годишнината на проф. Кирил Топалов, 2023
The essay (in Bulgarian) discusses two of Sofroniy Vrachanski’s writings, compiled in the volume ... more The essay (in Bulgarian) discusses two of Sofroniy Vrachanski’s writings, compiled in the volume “Kniga za trite religii” (The Book on Three Religions”), written in Bucharest in 1805. The main thesis statement is that between the translation of Dimitrie Kantemir’s treatise “Kniga sistima i religiya hi” and the original autobiography “Zhitie i stradaniya greshnago Sofroniya” exist formal and thematic convergencies on the basis of a common appeal agains conversion. The first part of the essay presents the two texts at question within their original manuscript “Kniga za trite religii”, and the second provides examples to illustrate the above mentioned formal and thematic resemblances. The essay pays tribute to Kiril Topalov’s observations on Sofroniy Vrachanski’s autobiography
Europe and the Orient: Past Encounters, Heritage, Present-Day Interactions, 2022
The Enlightenment tendency toward integration of heightened sentiments into self-reflexive texts ... more The Enlightenment tendency toward integration of heightened sentiments into self-reflexive texts reached the Bulgarians during a period of major political and intellectual shift, known as “the National Revival”. My study on the Bulgarian letter-writing manuals from the 18th and 19th c. illustrates the appropriation of this tendency into the local context. The manuals contained instructions about the strength and the propriety of the emotional content in a letter according to its purpose and recipient. Over the period they experienced several transformations. From handwritten manuscripts that were used mainly by the clergy they turned to printed textbooks, which assisted business correspondence and helped articulating intimacy in the private realm. In the course of time the epistolarity began to be associated with ingenuity. The implications of the techniques of articulation of emotions from the manuals to the actual correspondence were associated with the birth of modern literary subjectivity, and more specifically of the gendered literary subjectivity. Letter-writing, as a type of literary activity that was designated to women in the Bulgarian patriarchal society, turned to a policy of self-assertion for women writers and intellectuals. Their letters displayed their emotions only in private circles of their readers, yet letter-writing helped their public presence and initiative to publish their own texts.
In the course of the nineteenth-century the Bulgarian society went through several decisive steps... more In the course of the nineteenth-century the Bulgarian society went through several decisive steps towards its modernization. Susceptible to influences from their neighbor communities in the Ottoman Empire and from Western Europe, Bulgarians embraced new modes of consumption, lifestyle and reading habits that were regarded as part of a foreign civilizational model. The discussion on the adaptation of the imported foreign lifestyle practices reverberates on the pages of the first Bulgarian journals for children, which appeared in the early 1870s and diversified in numbers, topics, and audiences towards the end of the nineteenth-century. While making an overview of their general positioning in the Ottoman and Bulgarian public space, this article intends to entail a complex comparative approach of the exploration of civilization, childhood and consumerism on their pages.
There are several ways to study the connection between women and nationalism in the Ottoman 19th ... more There are several ways to study the connection between women and nationalism in the Ottoman 19th c. One of them is to integrate the story of the birth of the women’s movements within the grand narrative of the evolvement of the national idea among the different communities in the Ottoman Empire. Another is to revise the existing narrations and figurations about “the woman” as a metonymy of the nation and to offer alternative sources, terms and approaches to the topic. Yet another way is to introduce a comparative historical perspective between the discourses on emancipation among the different communities in the late Ottoman period. The last strategy is a step towards enrichment of the field of Southeast European women’s history, which until recently has been regarded only through the narrow scope of the lenses of the nationalist historiography.
The history of the Bulgarian women's organizations and practices within the urban structure o... more The history of the Bulgarian women's organizations and practices within the urban structure of the Romanian monarchy of the late 19th century has been rarely investigated. Furthermore, a lot can be done with respect to the multiethnic context and the parallel tendencies of emancipation between Bulgarians and Romanians during that historical period. The biographies of several women writers or activists1 have been taken into consideration by Bulgarian literary historians, yet the involvement of women in communal and cultural activities has been just sketched in the work of the several scholars.2 Their public presence is indicative of some general tendencies of the late Ottoman period when most of the Balkan territories fought for their independence. The evolvement of the nationalistic project required the mobilization of all Bulgarians, regardless of location, class, gender or age. The growing literacy among the population and especially the education of women became a premise for...
The name of Rayna Knyaginja is one of the few women’s names in the mainstream Bulgarian history a... more The name of Rayna Knyaginja is one of the few women’s names in the mainstream Bulgarian history about the Bulgarian’s movement for national independence. The goal of this text is to explain the mechanisms of myth-making that reserve a special place for this woman writer in the national history. She is the first Bulgarian woman writer of autobiography, and it is debatable if her own voice outspeaks that of the national grand narrative, that in the course of one century has created her glorious image of a woman, who is devoted to her nation’s struggle for independence from the Ottoman rule. The name Rayna Knjaginja means Queen Rayna, but this woman does not have a royal origin. She was just a teacher in a provincial town on the South of the Balkan mountain. Her real name was Rayna Popgeorgieva (1856-1917) and soon after she became a teacher at the women’s school of Panagurishe, she joined the conspiracy for the preparation of what was later called ‘the bloody April revolt of 1876’. She was ‘inaugurated’ a Queen for embroidering the flag of the revolt and for riding a horse next to the chief of the rebels. Later, after the failure of the revolt, she was imprisoned, interrogated and tortured and merely escaped her death because of the support she got from the representatives of the foreign consulates in the Ottoman empire. A year after these events, she put on paper her life-story, entitled “The autobiography of the Bulgarian teacher Rayna Popgeorgieva, called by the Turks the Bulgarian Queen Rayna” (1877). Besides the autobiography as means for self-creation there are other premises for the creation of the myth of Queen Rayna. The Bulgarian literary history of the mid 19th c. reminds us of a sentimental novel and a drama, which promoted the character of a medieval Bulgarian queen Rayna who, according to the plot of those literary pieces, was part of the Bulgarian royal history from the 11th c. Literature helped in the creation of the invariant of the charismatic woman-leader whose realistic version became the provincial school teacher with the same first name – Rayna.
Chapter 4 Imaginary Geographies: Border-places and'Home' in the Narratives of Migrant W... more Chapter 4 Imaginary Geographies: Border-places and'Home' in the Narratives of Migrant Women Nadejda Alexandrova and Dawn Lyon This is another interesting question, the question of the home. Well, where does one feel at home? What is home? Is this a geographical ...
Gewährt wird ein nicht exklusives, nicht übertragbares, persönliches und beschränktes Recht auf N... more Gewährt wird ein nicht exklusives, nicht übertragbares, persönliches und beschränktes Recht auf Nutzung dieses Dokuments. Dieses Dokument ist ausschließlich für den persönlichen, nicht-kommerziellen Gebrauch bestimmt. Die Nutzung stellt keine Übertragung des Eigentumsrechts an diesem Dokument dar und gilt vorbehaltlich der folgenden Einschränkungen: Auf sämtlichen Kopien dieses Dokuments müssen alle Urheberrechtshinweise und sonstigen Hinweise auf gesetzlichen Schutz beibehalten werden. Sie dürfen dieses Dokument nicht in irgendeiner Weise abändern, noch dürfen Sie dieses Dokument für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, aufführen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. We grant a non-exclusive, non-transferable, individual and limited right to using this document. This document is solely intended for your personal, non-commercial use. Use of this document does not include any transfer of property rights and it is conditional to the following lim...
Daniela Haarmann / Konrad Petrovszky (eds.), Language and Society in 18th Century South Eastern Europe, Yearbook of the Society for 18th Century Studies on South Eastern Europe 3 , 2020
Based on Sofroniy Vrachanski’s idiolect, this article addresses the linguistic heterogeneity of t... more Based on Sofroniy Vrachanski’s idiolect, this article addresses the linguistic heterogeneity of the Bulgarian language in the 18th century. First, it presents the overall educational and linguistic context in Bulgarian lands under Ottoman rule in the 18th century. It then discusses the three-component structure of written Bulgarian with elements of Middle Bulgarian, (New) Church Slavonic, and vernacular-based literary language. The article pays particular attention to the linguistic inventory of vernacular-based literary language in which Turkisms existed in parallel to Ottomanisms. In the final part of this article, several examples of Sofroniy Vrachanski’s written practice illustrate how cultural entanglements between different communities who lived under Ottoman rule contributed to the formation of modern national languages.
SPRE PĂMÂNTUL FĂGĂDUINȚEI, ÎNTRE BALCANI ȘI BUGEAC Omagiu Doamnei Profesoare Elena Siupiur la împlinirea vârstei de 80 de ani Editori: DANIEL CAIN, ANETA MIHAYLOVA, ROUMIANA L. STANTCHEVA și ANDREI TIMOTIN ED., 2020
CURIOSITY, LOVE AND STRUGGLE: TAKING A STEAMSHIP BETWEEN THE
BULGARIAN AND THE ROMANIAN COASTS OF... more CURIOSITY, LOVE AND STRUGGLE: TAKING A STEAMSHIP BETWEEN THE BULGARIAN AND THE ROMANIAN COASTS OF THE DANUBE RIVER (in Bulgarian) During the 19th century, the connections and interactions of the Bulgarians in the territory on the north of Danube intensified immensely due to the general wave of modernization that started transforming the political and cultural climate in the Ottoman territories. Steamships can be regarded as one of those vehicles that not only transported people and goods along the river but also became an arena of social interactions, quite indicative for the willingness of Bulgarians to embrace Western ideas of travel, progress and freedom. This article will lean on the work of the Romanian scholar Elena Siupiur in order to distinguish the connections that certain Bulgarians established in Romania, thus allowing for a mobility of intellectual ideas between representatives of the two nations. Further, it will discuss the space on steamships as a meeting point between diverse and adventurous people who later became role models for Bulgarian national culture and literature. The article will highlight episodes from several case studies, which present Bulgarian travelers as driven by curiosity, social engagement, romance and desire to struggle for freedom. The trips of Bacho Kiro Petrov, Todor Ikonomov, Ekaterina Vassileva and Hristo Botev correspond to the above-mentioned attitudes on board the steamships.
Книгите като събития в Европа и Османската империя (XVII-XIX в.), 2020
Resume in English:
The article presents the literary life of Genevieve de Brabant in the Bulgari... more Resume in English: The article presents the literary life of Genevieve de Brabant in the Bulgarian culture as a three-act play of reception of the story in the Bulgarian context during the Tanzimat era. Following Alain Badiou’s aesthetic perspective about theater as creating a necessary condition for the eventful enacting of notions, my study discovers the origins of the plot about suffering Genevieve and its appearance as a play and as a novella in the period when Bulgarians were still under Ottoman rule. The first part of the study connects the Western motive of Genevieve with а old religious one. It is the motive about “maiden without hands, saved by Holy Mary”. It was widespread in Bulgarian manuscripts and printed versions prior to the appearance it its foreign sister-motive, that of Genevieve. The second part of the article describes the changes that occurred during the translation of the German and French versions of Genevieve de Brabant by Christoph von Schmidt to Bulgarian. “Suffering Genevieve” is one of the first plays ever staged in Bulgaria and definitely a most favorite one by the spectators. The third “act” of my study describes the way a fictional version of the play of “Genevieve de Brabant” was included in the first Bulgarian modern novel – “Under the Yoke” by Ivan Vazov. In a Badiouan sense the amateur performance is something more than just a theater play. In the novel it functions as an intended gesture of emancipation with political implications for a bigger event - the liberation of Bulgaria.
The goal of my study was to investigate how the image of the cruel janissaries was created and re... more The goal of my study was to investigate how the image of the cruel janissaries was created and reproduced through written sources in the nineteenth century. I base my research on two major kinds of sources – literary and historiographical ones, which were written in the Tanzimat era across the Ottoman territories. The novel ‘Les janissaires’ by Alphonse Royer was a proof of such a circulation. Its multiple receptions require a supranational comparative perspective, such as that of ‘entangled histories’. The plot of the novel ‘Les janissaires’ contains the interfaith love story between Necip and Herminie. With the resources of the sentimentalist discourse the characters are experiencing continuous emotional turmoil because of all impediments in their relationship. The ending of the story is tragic, yet it is not so much a conflict between two families as in “Romeo and Juliette”, as it is a collision between two religious traditions and two visions of family structure – polygamous and monogamous.
Uploads
The discussion on the adaptation of the imported foreign lifestyle practices reverberates on the pages of the first Bulgarian journals for children, which appeared in the early 1870s and diversified in numbers, topics, and audiences towards the end of the nineteenth-century. While making an overview of their general positioning in the Ottoman and Bulgarian public space, this article intends to entail a complex comparative approach of the exploration of civilization, childhood and consumerism on their pages.
BULGARIAN AND THE ROMANIAN COASTS OF THE DANUBE RIVER (in Bulgarian)
During the 19th century, the connections and interactions of the Bulgarians in
the territory on the north of Danube intensified immensely due to the general wave of
modernization that started transforming the political and cultural climate in the Ottoman
territories. Steamships can be regarded as one of those vehicles that not only transported
people and goods along the river but also became an arena of social interactions, quite
indicative for the willingness of Bulgarians to embrace Western ideas of travel, progress
and freedom. This article will lean on the work of the Romanian scholar Elena Siupiur in
order to distinguish the connections that certain Bulgarians established in Romania, thus
allowing for a mobility of intellectual ideas between representatives of the two nations.
Further, it will discuss the space on steamships as a meeting point between diverse and
adventurous people who later became role models for Bulgarian national culture and
literature. The article will highlight episodes from several case studies, which present
Bulgarian travelers as driven by curiosity, social engagement, romance and desire to
struggle for freedom. The trips of Bacho Kiro Petrov, Todor Ikonomov, Ekaterina
Vassileva and Hristo Botev correspond to the above-mentioned attitudes on board the
steamships.
The article presents the literary life of Genevieve de Brabant in the Bulgarian culture as a three-act play of reception of the story in the Bulgarian context during the Tanzimat era. Following Alain Badiou’s aesthetic perspective about theater as creating a necessary condition for the eventful enacting of notions, my study discovers the origins of the plot about suffering Genevieve and its appearance as a play and as a novella in the period when Bulgarians were still under Ottoman rule. The first part of the study connects the Western motive of Genevieve with а old religious one. It is the motive about “maiden without hands, saved by Holy Mary”. It was widespread in Bulgarian manuscripts and printed versions prior to the appearance it its foreign sister-motive, that of Genevieve. The second part of the article describes the changes that occurred during the translation of the German and French versions of Genevieve de Brabant by Christoph von Schmidt to Bulgarian. “Suffering Genevieve” is one of the first plays ever staged in Bulgaria and definitely a most favorite one by the spectators. The third “act” of my study describes the way a fictional version of the play of “Genevieve de Brabant” was included in the first Bulgarian modern novel – “Under the Yoke” by Ivan Vazov. In a Badiouan sense the amateur performance is something more than just a theater play. In the novel it functions as an intended gesture of emancipation with political implications for a bigger event - the liberation of Bulgaria.
The discussion on the adaptation of the imported foreign lifestyle practices reverberates on the pages of the first Bulgarian journals for children, which appeared in the early 1870s and diversified in numbers, topics, and audiences towards the end of the nineteenth-century. While making an overview of their general positioning in the Ottoman and Bulgarian public space, this article intends to entail a complex comparative approach of the exploration of civilization, childhood and consumerism on their pages.
BULGARIAN AND THE ROMANIAN COASTS OF THE DANUBE RIVER (in Bulgarian)
During the 19th century, the connections and interactions of the Bulgarians in
the territory on the north of Danube intensified immensely due to the general wave of
modernization that started transforming the political and cultural climate in the Ottoman
territories. Steamships can be regarded as one of those vehicles that not only transported
people and goods along the river but also became an arena of social interactions, quite
indicative for the willingness of Bulgarians to embrace Western ideas of travel, progress
and freedom. This article will lean on the work of the Romanian scholar Elena Siupiur in
order to distinguish the connections that certain Bulgarians established in Romania, thus
allowing for a mobility of intellectual ideas between representatives of the two nations.
Further, it will discuss the space on steamships as a meeting point between diverse and
adventurous people who later became role models for Bulgarian national culture and
literature. The article will highlight episodes from several case studies, which present
Bulgarian travelers as driven by curiosity, social engagement, romance and desire to
struggle for freedom. The trips of Bacho Kiro Petrov, Todor Ikonomov, Ekaterina
Vassileva and Hristo Botev correspond to the above-mentioned attitudes on board the
steamships.
The article presents the literary life of Genevieve de Brabant in the Bulgarian culture as a three-act play of reception of the story in the Bulgarian context during the Tanzimat era. Following Alain Badiou’s aesthetic perspective about theater as creating a necessary condition for the eventful enacting of notions, my study discovers the origins of the plot about suffering Genevieve and its appearance as a play and as a novella in the period when Bulgarians were still under Ottoman rule. The first part of the study connects the Western motive of Genevieve with а old religious one. It is the motive about “maiden without hands, saved by Holy Mary”. It was widespread in Bulgarian manuscripts and printed versions prior to the appearance it its foreign sister-motive, that of Genevieve. The second part of the article describes the changes that occurred during the translation of the German and French versions of Genevieve de Brabant by Christoph von Schmidt to Bulgarian. “Suffering Genevieve” is one of the first plays ever staged in Bulgaria and definitely a most favorite one by the spectators. The third “act” of my study describes the way a fictional version of the play of “Genevieve de Brabant” was included in the first Bulgarian modern novel – “Under the Yoke” by Ivan Vazov. In a Badiouan sense the amateur performance is something more than just a theater play. In the novel it functions as an intended gesture of emancipation with political implications for a bigger event - the liberation of Bulgaria.