“Primitive Delight” or Patriotic Weapon? Cover Image
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„Примитивна наслада“ или патриотично оръжие?
“Primitive Delight” or Patriotic Weapon?

On the ideological planning of a group of popular love songs from 19th century

Author(s): Anna Alexieva
Subject(s): History, Language and Literature Studies, Literary Texts, Studies of Literature, Modern Age, 19th Century
Published by: Институт за литература - БАН
Keywords: Bulgarian National Revival; love songs; songs in Turkish; literary canon

Summary/Abstract: The paper examines songs with love and erotic content, dating back from the so-called National Revival Period. They used to be visible part of the popular culture of Bulgaria and the Southeastern Europe region in initial decades of the Modern Bulgarian statehood. These songs were originally written in Bulgarian and in Turkish, but with Cyrillic alphabet. Turkish ones are introduced for the first time in Bulgarian Literary History Studies. They were taken from books by Manol Lazarov, Petko Slaveykov, and by an unidentified author with initials K.S.M. This popular literature genre had a complex biography, following to some extent the ideological planning of the Bulgarian society and the social trajectory of the ideas of the nation, particular for that period. Initially, they were well accepted, so they gained vast popularity. Such a positive reception was particular for the period, when they were not experienced as non-matching to the emerging national ideology. Coincidingly with the rising of Bulgarian nationalism, their popularity decreased and they accumulated certain criticism, so in the beginning of the XX c. they were marginalized. In the last decades of XIX s., according to the changes of the ideological climate in Bulgaria, some of them were reinterpreted in a patriotic key.

  • Issue Year: 66/2023
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 3-35
  • Page Count: 32
  • Language: Bulgarian