The rhetoric of sincerity in Bulgarian underground literature from the 1960s to the 1980s
The rhetoric of sincerity in Bulgarian underground literature from the 1960s to the 1980s

Summary/Abstract: Postwar Bulgarian literature under the communist regime was divided into three currents: official, exile, and unofficial. From the perspective of the rhetoric of sincerity and its literary manifestations, the most relevant object of research appears to be unofficial texts, i.e., those that were published in samizdat or remained in the form of manuscripts or typescripts. This article examines the manifestations of the rhetoric of sincerity in selected underground works and particularly the ways in which it was expressed in poetry by Georgi Mitskov and Mehmed Karahyuseinov, prose by Boris Hristov and Emiliya Dvoryanova, and samizdat almanac NLO. Among other approaches, it is based on Michel Foucault’s concept of parrhesia (free speech), as he understands it in the context of ancient philosophy and literature, and applies it to the situation of state socialism in the second half of the 20th century, in which speakers (or literary characters) express their personal relationship to truth, risking oppression, ostracism, and denigration. The study explores how authors and their literary characters respond to social hypocrisy and insincerity in their efforts to maintain their own human dignity.

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