Search results for: Aretov in Author Name

AN ATTRACTIVE ENEMY: THE CONQUEST OF CONSTANTINOPLE IN BULGARIAN IMAGERY

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2019

The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople was a critical event in the history of the Balkans, that left its profound imprint on the notions of Bulgarians of their past and of their self-image. Behind the seemingly unambiguous evaluation of this event – a defeat of Christendom that has to do with the fall of the Bulgarian Kingdom – an observer could trace one more complicated, ambivalent picture. The paper marks some of its premises:A) The city was unsuccessfully attacked by Bulgarians several times in the past and they still think themselves through the prism of these wars. B) Byzantines (Greeks) and Ottomans (Turks) are the traditional enemies in the Bulgarian national mythology. Their conflict and their interrelations as a whole generate different reactions, multiple plots.C) In the nineteenth century when the foundations of Bulgarian nationalism were set up, Constantinople (Istanbul) was probably the city with the largest Bulgarian population and the stage for many of the important events in the Bulgarian society.This paper offers а brief review of the main types of Bulgarian texts from the 19th and early 20th centuries dealing with the fall of Constantinople, comparing them with some Byzantine sources, with some Greek and other interpretations of this event and focuses on one not so popular dramatic work, written in verses by Svetoslav Milarov in the early 1870s. Here the ambivalent attitude of a part of Bulgarian society to the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople was more visible.

Book reviews

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov,Rumiana Bozhilova,Julia Zlatkova,Yura Konstantinova,Gergana Georgieva,Elisaveta Todorova / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2007

COMPTES-RENDUS

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov,Stoyanka Kenderova,Daniela Koleva,Yani Milchakov / Language(s): Multiple languages / Issue: 4/2012

DREAMING CONSTANTINOPLE: AN ALTERNATIVE VERSION OF PETKO TODOROV AND NIKOLAY RAYNOV

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2020

Constantinople has a key place in Bulgarian national mythology. In many texts (folklore, chronicles, literature), it is presented as a great city that had to be seized or that was conquered by alien infidels. Petko Todorov and Nikolay Raynov, two important writers from the early 20th century, introduced an alternative version of the attitude towards the capital of the Byzantine Empire. In it, the Bulgarian ruler King Simeon refuses to subdue the city because they do not want history to recollect them as barbarians and destroyers. Such an attitude could not be interpreted as dominant or representative for its time. Nevertheless, it suggests the existence of some overtones in the overall image of the city and directs towards an ambivalent interpretation of Constantinople in the imagination of the Bulgarians.

Enlightened Travelers and Their Mental Maps

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2012

The issue of mental mapping of Eastern Europe (Wolff 1994), posed during the Enlightenment, and the similar problem of the image of the Balkans as a periphery of Europe (Todorova 1997), are both multifaceted. This paper is dealing with just one of their various aspects – the image of the Balkans as seen from certain typical European view-points and reactions to that image in Bulgaria. The reactions to the images forged somewhere in “Europe” stem from two opposed attitudes, of acceptance and of rejection.

Evolution and competition of the myths of origin: Bulgarian and Balkan aspects

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2017

The paper argues that historic myths and myths of origin, being an essential part of national mythology, are neither the first to emerge nor the only one. Furthermore, as a general rule, there are often several variations of the narration about the past of a nation that are evolving and compete for the dominant position.In an attempt to evade the polemics the author analyses some Bulgarian aspects of the crucial problem about the evolution and competition among these variations of national mythology comparing them with analogical Balkan phenomena. In all these countries there are mythical narrations about the ancient times, about Christian Middle Ages and Byzantium, about the struggle for an independent state, etc. They were arguing for primacy in the beginning; later some ideologists of the nation managed to build one relatively stable synthesis.

History of Literature Here and Now. Experience and Doubts

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): English / Issue: 3-4/2018

The paper deals with some methodological problems in literary history and searches for their analogues and connections in historiography. What defines a text as literature? What does literary history really examine? The centuries-old unity of Bulgarian literature – does it really exist and what are its boundaries in time and space? The paper questions some established notions about these topics and suggests that such questions and doubts are related to the historiography.

Identity, Tradition and Values in the Ideas of Contemporary Bulgarian Humanities. Personal Observations.

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): English / Issue: 3-4/2006

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU EN BULGARIE. ELEMENTS DE BIBLIOGRAPHIE

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov,Raia Zaimova / Language(s): French / Issue: 1/2013

La perception de l'étranger. Le romancier français Auguste Maquet dans le débat public bulgare du milieu du XIXe s.

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): French / Issue: 3/2003

La réceptioon de Voltaire en Bulgarie

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): French / Issue: 3+4/1995

L'Image Bulgare des Romanciers Français du XVIII Siècle

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): French / Issue: 3+4/1999

LITERARY ARCHIVES AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION ON THE BALKAN CULTURAL RELATIONS. THE CASE OF ASSEN CHRISTOPHOROV

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2014

Lucian Boia. History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness. (Лучиан Бойа. История и мит в румънското съзнание). Budapes, Central European University...

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 5-6/2006

Surveys and References

ORIENTALISM, OCCIDENTALISM, AND THE IMAGE OF THE ‘OTHER’ IN BALKAN CONTEXT

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2010

Stephen Greenblatt. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. New York: W. W. Norton. 2011.

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 3/2015

Stephen Greenblatt tells the story of how Poggio Bracciolini, a 15th-century papal emissary, and obsessive book hunter, saved the last copy of the Roman poet Lucretius‘s On the Nature of Things from near-terminal neglect in a German monastery, thus reintroducing important ideas that sparked the modern age. The author analyzes this development in a very broad cultural and philosophical scale. This review presents the monograph of the so-called New Historicism and its possible applications in Bulgarian scholarship.

The Abducted Faith and Bulgarian National Mythology

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2003

The boundaries of the Bulgarian. Gazes from inside and outside Zachary Stoyanov and Constantine Jireček

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): English / Issue: 31/2007

The Prose of the European Enlightenment and the Bulgarian Culture

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2000

The starting point of Bulgaria in national mythology

Author(s): Nikolay Aretov / Language(s): English / Issue: 14/2014

This paper examines the dynamics of ideas on the beginnings of Bulgaria, such as were developed by early nationalism in the 18th and 19th centuries. Surveys show that there were different theses which competed tacitly. It is immediately noticeable that the figure of the Founder was imposed with difficulty and relatively late – in fact not until the 20th century. Paisius of Hilendar and the other authors of early histories presented Bulgarians in the context of Biblical history, and thus the beginning of Bulgarian time was associated with Noah and his sons. This idea was not openly attacked by successive generations, but they alternatively associated Bulgarian time and Bulgaria with the medieval kingdom, and especially with the baptism and deeds of Saints Cyril and Methodius. Among pre-Christian rulers, Khan emerges as significant, presented as Law-Maker and great Warrior, but not as Founder. It is typical for the nationalism of any ideological (and not only ideological) structure to strive for extension – in this case to seek its starting point at an ever earlier date. This proces can also be observed in the structures of Bulgarian nationalism: in the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries there was a clear focus on the time before the Founder Khan Asparukh (7th century), and scholars and journalists still take pleasure in finding older Bulgarian states. However, before the founding of the Principality of Bulgaria (1878), the opposite was true. (Some) representatives of the revolutionary movement in fact rejected the medieval period and preferred to focus on more recent periods, if not on their time itself and even on the immediate future. More or less unexpectedly, this idea was re-vitalised in the late 20th century with the catch-phrase “the most Bulgarian time” associated with the 1870s.