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Bulgarian National Revival Literature as an Imagined Text or the Paradoxes of a Definition

Summary/Abstract: The author attempts to re-think and revise some widely spread views and cliches concerning the nature and chronological scope of the Bulgarian National Revival period. To begin with, the current definition of the Bulgarian National Revival literature is not precise enough, as it loads the term "national revival" - which, in its essence, belongs to history, literary criticism and cultural anthropology - with additional axiological meanings. Secondly, the the chronological scope of the Bulgarian National Revival is being constantly extended to embrace a much larger period of time than it actually did. The continuous effort to stretch the chronological boundaries of the national revival period does, in turn, prevent scholars from assessing the unique character of its accomplishments. In the third place, modern scholars tend to assign some supraliterary value to the National Revival literature; as a result, the literary production of this time period is represented as being the product of some nineteenth-century literary canons while its true merits remain hidden from the scholar's eye. The body of the Bulgarian National Revival literature includes works of various literary genres as well as certain works such as textbooks, newspapers, journals and texts in the widest sense. The latter, however, are seldom used as anything else but indirect sources of information about the previous or the next period in Bulgarian history. The author calls for a more rational attitude toward the cultural phenomena of the National Revival period and recommends a more careful use of metaphorical terms. By analogy with B. Anderson's imagined community, the author describes the Bulgarian National Revival literature as an imagined text.

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