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The objective of this paper is to present an interesting example from Bulgaria – the Rhodope Mountains, which abound in visible and invisible boundaries. The paper focuses on the cultural elements which are selected by the communities as identifiers to distinguish themselves from others. The three basic ethno-religious groups inhabiting the mountains (Turks, Muslim Bulgarians, and Christian Bulgarians) possess a complex of cultural characteristics including language, names, self-identification, marriage patterns, traditional and ritual systems, religious affiliation, clothing, and so on, which are instrumentalized with the objective of achieving closer relations or drawing dividing lines between different communities. The process of the eradication and establishment of new boundaries is especially dynamic with regard to Muslim Bulgarians. They perceive themselves as a boundary community, and in fact they are regarded as such by both Christian Bulgarians and Turks. In their attempts to overcome that border situation, the middle and younger generations of Muslim Bulgarians in the Middle and Eastern Rhodopes have started to express a Bulgarian identity more frequently. The elder Muslim Bulgarians in the regions of Gotse Delchev, Madan, and Rudozem, as well as the younger ones, place their Muslim belonging more frequently at the center of their personal and group identity, which finds expression in the drawing of cultural boundaries to distinguish themselves from members of the other groups.
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The focus of the article lies on the interpretations of folklore elements in the Bulgarian animated cinema as well as on the rationalization of main features of the Bulgarian national character in the period from the late 1940s to the present days. In the 1960s, the process which has begun with the ideological censorship of the Bulgarian folklore tradition quickly transformed into satirical film model directing its criticism on the national character of the Bulgarian. This model was also based on the nontraditional visual representation of the folklore through the modern black and white drawing and caricature, through the grotesque and the decorative drawing. The next stage of the transformation of fairy and mythological subjects was related to the radical neo-vanguard practices in our animated cinema which compared our tradition to foreign cultures and ideas on a global scale and in wide range – from the direct parallels in art to the psychoanalytical interpretations visualized in surrealistic stylistics. The last 25 years marked a peculiar identity crisis of the Bulgarian artists. The changes after the fall of the Berlin Wall created certain fear in the artists to turn to the rationalization of the national origin and character.
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Hüseyinzade Ali bey, 24 Şubat 1864’te Kuzey Azerbaycan’ın Salyan şehrinde birçok din adamı yetiştirmiş bir ailenin çocuğu olarak doğmuştur. Küçük yaşlarında annesini ve babasını kaybeden Ali, çocukluk yıllarını o sıralarda Kafkasyalı Müslümanların şeyhülislâmı olan dedesi (annesinin babası) Şeyh Ahmet Salyanî’nin himayesinde, Tiflis şehrinde geçirmiş, Rusça, Farsça ve Arapça öğrenmiştir. Zamanın meşhur ilim adamlarından Şeyh Ahmed’in evinde toplanan Tiflis aydınlarının sohbetleri, henüz ilk gençliğinden itibaren onda edebiyata ve felsefeye büyük ilgi uyandırmıştır.
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The article is focused on a very interesting pottery vessel called “podnitsa“ (flat earthen baking dish). On its surface it is written the year of its producing, 1866. The aim of the research is to publish the artefact, to study the rare rite connected to it, to describe the date and its deposition in the pit. The presence of an ornate pot, called podnitsa, marked with a specific year, as well as of other similar dishes without decoration bears record of a preserved old tradition of fertility and harvesting or of reminiscence of one practiced by a limited group of people (several families or a family) which is not a subject of mass tendency. This would probably mean that the personal life cycle of the people who created the podnitsa is deeply marked by sensitive events culminating perhaps on May 1, 1866, on the day of the Jeremiah holiday. The material projection of these processes is a ceramic vessel whose features characterize it as the only one studied so far. This artefact as well as the large set of findings during the archaeological excavations at the site in the region of the village of Velikan add a yet-unknown nuance to the ritual of the Jeremiah feast.
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The topic of analysis in this paper are lullabies. The idea is to compare and contrast some of the themes, imagery, and motifs of this specific genre within different folk traditions, as well as their inclusion and development in the Bulgarian lullaby. This paper is split into several small chapters: Growth and prosperity – Death; Forest – Crib in a Tree; Who Rocks the Crib? (motif “Everyone is at work”) and Animals (motif “Your mother is a fox,//your father is a wolf…“).
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Adamova glava - one of the most famous plant in Russian mythological herbarium. Plant name Adamova glava (and similar variants) is fixed in the Russian manuscripted herbals from the beginning of the XVIII century. The text analysis shows that it is not a single plant, but several different ones. The purpose of this report - to show what kinds of articles in herbals related to plant name Adamova glava and what folkloric motifs correspond with it. We identified five types of articles and the following groups of motives: a) the Rituals of Herb-Gathering: on the eve of Midsummer Day at dawn, to tear through silver and gold / with cross, with prayers; b) Nomination: plant is the king of all herbs; c) The functions of the plant: from porcha smertnaia, infertility, for favor heads; to cause water and air demons; assistance in the construction of dams, tall buildings; rapid healing of wounds; g) etiological legend: the plant appeared on the Jordan River under the holy tree cypress.
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This article discusses the culture of shaming – a perspective that appears where modernizing discourses on Polish society are confronted with the cultural experiences of villagers. Rakowski explores several possible ways of going beyond this perspective, referring, in turn, to the world of rural social subjectivity as it emerges from artistic and ethnographic projects, the conditions of belonging and the possibilities of performing an ‘inward turn’ in situations of intersocial encounter, and the potential to construct an alternative understanding of society – a proto-sociology. Thus artistic projects are linked with what is ethnographic and current, and above all with the possibility of an alternative social history shaped by rural communities.
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Kosovska bitka bila je i ostala u narodnoj svesti centralni događaj čitave srpske istorije. „Tu je po opštem, ali neopravdanom, uverenju propala srpska država, tu je pokopana njena samostalnost, tu je počelo robovanje Turcima”. Datum bitke je neosporan, dan Svetog Vida 15. jun (28. jun, po novom kalendaru) 1389. godine. Na srpskoj strani, uz kneza Lazara Hrebeljanovića, borili su se njegov zet Vuk Branković (koji će, u znatno kasnije nastalom predanju, biti optužen za izdaju) i bosanski vojvoda Vlatko Vuković, a na turskoj sultan (emir) Murat sa sinovima Bajazitom i Jakub Čelebijom. Ukoliko je Muratovo turbe (koje postoji i danas) nastalo na mestu pogibije turskog sultana, onda bi pozornica bitke bila deo kosovske ravnice kod sastava Laba i Sitnice, nedaleko od Prištine. Izvesna je, takođe, i pogibija oba vladara - kneza Lazara i sultana Murata-na samom bojnom polju. Ovog drugog nožem je rasporio neki srpski feudalac, kojeg će kasniji izvori identifikovati kao Miloša (K)obilića i kneževog zeta.
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Položaj žene u društvu i porodici možemo promatrati samo u uskoj zavisnosti s položajem članova porodice oba spola, s razvojem porodice kao društvenog organizma i profilom tradicijske društvene sredine u kojoj odnosne porodične strukture postoje. Seoske smo društvene sredine donedavno mogli promatrati kao tradicijska područja, radi postojećih kulturnih, ekonomskih i socijalnih razlika u odnosu na veće urbane sredine i radi ujednačenosti tradicijskih karakteristika i normi. Tradicionalnost, kao pojam današnjice, ima izraženu komponentu patrijarhalnosti, uz neke druge karakteristike kao npr. relevantnost javnog mnijenja lokalne društvene sredine, pravni dualizam (tj. zadržavanje običajnopravnih normi uz prihvaćanje pozitivno pravnog sistema) i dr. U relativno zatvorenijim, a možemo reći i introvertnijim, društvenim organizmima te su karakteristike indikator socijalne integracije. Međutim, današnje stanje pokazuje da osim u seoskim i u manjim i većim gradskim sredinama ponovo nalazimo izvjesne tradicijske karakteristike života i norme ponašanja. Takvo je stanje nastalo uslijed činjenice da je rast gradova baziran uglavnom na doseljavanju, i to većinom seoskog stanovništva, a manje samim priraštajem žitelja grada. To znači da prethodni sloj tradicijskog sadržaja, kroz vremensku dimenziju, dobiva impulse za održanje bar jednog dijela tog sadržaja, što zavisi o brojnosti useljenika i ujednačenosti njihova tradicijskog profila. O intenzitetu tradicijskog kvaliteta u urbanim sredinama, kao i u ruralnim, ovisit će i održanje osnovnih društvenih i moralnih karakteristika, brzina njihovih modifikacija i prilagođavanje novim uvjetima, koji postaju osnova za dalji razvoj.
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In the ecclesiastical Christian calendar, Holy Trinity or Holy Ghost is a moveable feast and is celebrated on the Monday after Pentecost, in May or June. In the folk calendar, this holiday marks the beginning of the so-called Whitsuntide or Midsummer Week (in Bulgarian Rusalska nedelya). It is believed to be the period of wood nymphs’ special activity – during the week those supernatural creatures, who personify vegetation and greenery in the fields and the woods, provide the fertility of crops and vineyards. The analysis focuses on those notions and the respective practices, outlining that to a great degree Whitsuntide corresponds to the Dirty or Pagan days in the winter – the period between Christmas and Epiphany. As this is one of the most important periods in the agricultural calendar, it is bound with people’s efforts to ensure fertility and water balance in their inhabited territory by offering sacrifices and propitiating the supernatural powers who are owners and hosts of vegetation and water resources.
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The production of sea salt is a traditional occupation in Pomorie. Until the early1920s the town is the main centre of salt-production in Bulgaria and because of that, the salt-pans and the method of work are a subject of numerous researches, travel notes, and popular readings. Together with the well-known practice of production of sea salt, the descriptions in some of the historical sources of the size of the saltpans and their structure, the means of transportation of saltwater from one basin to another and of exportation of the salt produced differ from what is known about the Pomorie salt-pans in the period studied. The critical analysis of these evidences gives reasons to consider them reliable in some cases and insufficiently proven another. The characteristics of the salt-pans’ structure and the technologies used are most often ingenious decisions of the local salt-producers but some of them have analogues in the world production.
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The poem “Cyril and Methodius”, more commonly known as “Varvi, Narode Vazrodeni…” was written in 1892 by Stoyan Mihaylovsky in Ruse. Before starting work as an Associate Professor of Literature at Sofia University “St. Clement of Ohrid”, he used to teach at the high school in Ruse, which is exactly where, on 15 April he wrote the fourteen verses and sent them to Dr. Krastev. The latter then published them in book no. 9–10 of the “Misal” magazine. The text of the hymn may seem pretty familiar to us, and maybe exactly because of this, we do not pay enough attention to the cultural connotation of the images of St. Cyril and St. Methodius in it. And the connotation is rich and intentional. The current research aims at trying to decode it and find out why exactly the images of the two first teachers are always a support in Bulgarian mentality.
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The instrumental Macedonian ethnopop music is particularly interesting phenomenon because of its development and prolonged existence in conditions with persistent internal influences of the social and economic environment, but also external influences from the neighboring and distant music cultures. These influences have determined the way of the creation of this music and its final musical products. Regarding the fact that the instrumental Macedonian ethnopop music had its peak especially in the 1980ties, the subject of interest in this paper will be the musical pieces from the mentioned period. Also, a special at¬tention will be dedicated to the creativity, in other words to the process of creation of the instrumental Macedonian ethnopop music and the reproductive process of this music. The conclusions will be based on the analysis of the music characteristics of the recorded material which forms the database of the sample of 100 music pieces.
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The folklore narratives for the water bull from Kyustendil region occupy an important place in the Bulgarian folklore faith. They represent a connection between historical Bulgarian communities on both sides of the Bulgarian-Serbian and Bulgarian-Macedonian state borders.
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The article discusses modern patterns of expressing wishes which are transformations of ancient pagan rituals. With the adoption of Christianity, these models and, above all, their form, such as wishes, undergo changes under the influence of biblical symbols. The main attention is paid to the relationship between the functions of non-verbal and verbal semiotics in the rituals of wishes in the mythological, religious-Christian and secularised worldviews. In addition, the point that the ritual is a set of consecutive ritual actions is supported. An attempt is also made to reveal the inner form of wishes through the prism of the theory of gift-exchange. The characteristics of external and internal pragmatics of the remnants of an ancient ritual is represented in wishes as cultural etiquette forms of gift-exchange or, as is customary to say in modern discourse studies, forms of politeness. The need for experimental studies of different ethnocultures aiming at the remains of ancient rituals in modern consciousness is substantiated.
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The Lower Gran region accommodates a large number of polycultural sites from different historical periods, many of which we know only thanks to surface collections. In 2009, research was carried out for scientific and documentary purposes in the village Hronovce, part of Čajakovo, site Rúbaniská (Levice District). On the site were represented prehistoric (Stone Age, Bronze Age) as well as protohistoric finds (Roman period). The article refers to the protohistoric period, when a Germanic necropolis was located there from the end of the Early Roman period (stage B2, B2/C1). Three funeral urns were examined and many small artefacts (fibulae, buckles, weapons, belt components...) and fragments of undecorated and decorated pottery with various designs (barbotino, stamped decoration, toothed wheels, etc.) were discovered. The studied site in Hronovce confirms the intensive settlement of the Lower Gran region by the Quadi in the 2nd century AD, or more precisely at the time of the Marcomannic wars.
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