ПРОЯВИ И ФОРМИ НА ПОПУЛЯРНАТА ЛИТЕРАТУРА В БЪЛГАРИЯ ОТ КРАЯ НА 19. И НАЧАЛОТО НА 20. ВЕК
ACTS AND FORMS OF POPULAR LITERATURE IN BULGARIA FROM THE END OF THE 19TH AND THE BEGINNING OF THE 20TH CENTURY

Summary/Abstract: The article examines the manifestations of popular literature in Bulgaria from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. It offers a commentary on the plots of those writings and some strategies to hold the reader’s attention. The primary focus is on three forms of popular culture: scary stories, fantastic stories, spiritualism, and somnambulism. The opinions of some elite Bulgarian intellectuals about popular literature, expressed in the periodical press, are discussed. The study analyzes the socio-cultural contexts in which popular literature existed in Bulgaria: a constant growth of the literacy level, formation of the elite-mass opposition, the industrialization of culture and literature in particular, and the appearance of popular literature on the pages of major newspapers and magazines. The thesis that is defended is that the popular literature of the period was based on the familiar and formulaic, rather than on creative experiment and innovation and its strategies to attracts its readers were descriptions of the exotic, the mysterious, and the construction of sentimental and melodramatic plots. The elite-mass boundary is problematized, and based on some memoirs, it is concluded that even elite intellectuals such as Simeon Radev and Alexander Balabanov or classics of Bulgarian literature like Ivan Vazov visited the theatrical-carnival manifestations of Bulgarian popular culture. Thus it seems justifiable to claim that the history of any national literature, including the Bulgarian one, would be incomplete if the forms and manifestations of popular literature were ignored.

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