Кирил Христов. Конструкти на въобразеното чуждо: славянство, славянщина

Author(s): Lyubka Lipcheva-Prandzeva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 6/2018

For the Bulgarian poet Kiril Hristov, the coordinate system of foreign-ness encompasses three fundamental ethnocultural dimensions: Italian-ness, Slavic-ness and German-ness. The present essay aims to discuss the two basic stages of the utopian modelling of Slavic-ness in his oeuvre. In his works such “Slavic sun” and “Fate” (the period before the Balkan wars), the poet vocally contested the potential of the “imposed” and “ready-made”, prescribed political project of Slavophils. In the novel “White devils” and his journal “The times and the contemporaries” (the period after WW1), Kiril Hristov built a utopian retrospective of the ideal foreign-ness through the story of the former “Wends” – the Slavic tribes that were forcefully melted in the Germanic world. The novel’s self leaves that Germany he used to dream about after realizing that it was the engulfed and forever lost Slavic-ness that had drawn him irresistibly to it in the first place.

Край кладенеца на светицата, под манастирската лоза

Author(s): Elena Getova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 6/2018

This essay outlines the possibilities for chartering parallels between two collections of prose – “Under the Monastery Vine” by Elin Pelin and “The Well of Saint Clare” by Anatole France. The analogies and juxtapositions presented here stem from the categorical insistence on behalf of some scholars who see the two texts in terms of the following relation: follower (that of Elin Pelin) and prototype, model (that of Anatole France). The in-depth analysis of this relation reveals certain transformations of the model that are indicative of specific narrative decisions on the part of the Bulgarian author.

Учебно-помощни поредици на литературната класика – стратегически избор на издателя

Author(s): Malina Dimitrova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 6/2018

The article is reviewing the educational aids of classical literature in the context of publishing and education politics based on already published products that are in circulation on the market in the period 1990-2014. The analysis consists of a comparison of the internal elements such as selection of the texts, placing the application and textual preparation which allows us to divide them into two groups: Conventional – this is characterized by a complete structural and genre harmony between the components of each volume in the series. Commercial – characterized by the low quality of the editorial process. Both groups show the nature of the publishing choices, which vary widely, and allow us to talk about differences between these seemingly identical publishing products.

Един възможен модел за работа с медиен текст в часовете по български език

Author(s): Despina Vasileva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 6/2018

The Bulgarian Language Curriculum focuses on the development of students‘ text-based skills to different levels of communication - reading, listening, speaking. The article suddests a model for working with media texts in Bulgarian language learninig. The article represents cognitive and metacognitive levels of perception of the text in order to develop the social competence of the students.The article explains the ways of working on text structure (topic, subtopics, paragraphs); types of speech activities covered in Bulgarian language learning, language functions of the text .Suggested patterns of tasks and types of activities are developed to increase media literacy skills.

Играя на тънката струна на някого

Author(s): Elena Hadjieva,Reni Manova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 6/2018

Idioms are ethno-specific markers, which are frequently used in colloquial speech. Introducing the foreign students with the cultural and axiological knowledge, accumulated in the idiomatic meaning, is а main component of the teaching process.The aim of this article is to represent the results of purposive survey questionnaires for foreign students. The results of the survey show whether the students understand the meaning of the so-called new idioms in Bulgarian. New idioms are an important part of everyday Bulgarian. They come up all the time in both written and spoken language. Idioms don‘t make sense literally and the students will need to familiarize themselves with the meaning and usage of each idiom. The most important methodological procedure is to provide idioms in context, so the students can fully understand the meaning.

Българистиката в Санктпетербургския държавен университет: история и настояще

Author(s): Radostina Stoyanova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 6/2018

This article briefly surveys the history and current status of Bulgarian studies at the Saint Petersburg State University, with a special focus on the Bulgarists and Slavists. We discuss the sequence of native Bulgarian lecturers in Bulgarian language, literature and culture from 1976 till the present.

Neurodivergence Enminded/Embodied: Living with Severe Traumatic Brain Injury

Author(s): Douglas E. Kidd / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2018

This article positions my experiences as a severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) survivor relative to other TBI survivors and in context of persons with disabilities (PWDs) living in the United States and the world. This autoethnographical account (by autoethnography I understand a method or form of social research that serves the purpose of exploring personal experiences of the researcher) examines the life of a neurodivergent individual whose brain functions in ways that deviate significantly from social norms. I explore profound changes to my identity and the resultant social disconnection I encounter since acquiring a severe TBI more than a decade ago. The profound alterations to my identity affect my ability to process, and then adjust, to the demands of my surroundings. As I decode, decipher and process the world, at times my brain damage triggers and/or produces episodes of temporal dissonance. As these shifts in timing occur, they have tremendous impact on my emotional stability. Despite these outward difficulties, I celebrate my altered awareness of time and new identity as a disabled person. Connecting relevant critical trauma studies scholarship to the themes addressed here, the article examines how moving through trauma, coma and amnesia to a new life with cognitive, emotional, psychological, and physical impairments importantly enriches expression of my humanity. I will demonstrate the salient aspects of my new life – emotional sensitivity and volatility – may on the surface seem detrimental and undesirable; however, these qualities greatly enhance my identification with and empathy for others, which in turn drive my artistic, social, cultural and political expression, along with my quest for community.

To Leap First Down into the Trench: Tristram Shandy’s Critique of the Wounds of War

Author(s): Tracy Anne Travis / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2018

While scholars have mined Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy to understand the form and development of the novel as a literary genre, a central narrative element that has garnered significant scholarly attention is Tristram’s troubled Uncle Toby ‒ a veteran of the Nine Years War who bears a mysterious wound in the groin and who is obsessed with understanding war through the construction and use of miniature battle re-enactments. By recognizing Uncle Toby as a central character of Tristram Shandy and by contextualizing the novel as war literature, this essay demonstrates that Uncle Toby’s struggles to express his ambiguous trauma suffered as a soldier become a critical commentary on the social structures and circumstances that lead to the experiences of wounded veterans. Situating Tristram Shandy in the context of war literature, this article reveals how Toby’s character plays on Enlightenment conceptions of honour and valour as motivators for soldiers. Furthermore, the article argues that applying the theory of Moral Injury (long present but largely unnamed in war literature), rather than the tempting diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), allows for a more holistic understanding of Toby’s critical commentary.

The Shameless Dance Cannot Last Forever

Author(s): Kinga Dunin / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

From a sociological perspective, shame is an instrument of social control, while shamelessness is a way to break out from under that control. One strategy of shamelessness is camp, both as a poetics and as a practice. Dunin’s analysis of Witold Gombrowicz’s short story ‘Lawyer Kraykowski’s Dancer’ as well as Michał Witkowski’s ‘life writing’ attempts to answer how effective this strategy is and to identify its limits.

An Ethnography of the Production of Translation: Literatures from the (Semi) Periphery on the German Publishing Market

Author(s): Paweł Zajas / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2016

This article discusses the processes of bringing translations of literatures from nations on the (semi)periphery to the German publishing market. Using Dutch and Polish literatures as case studies, and drawing empirical data from the archives of the publishing house Suhrkamp Verlag, covering the period from the early 1960s until 1993. Zajas examines what aspects of the German publishing landscape have propelled Dutch literature to a relatively prominent position in the second half of the twentieth century, while literary translations from Polish came to only about half the number and were thus relegated to the periphery. Latour’s actor-network theory (ANT) allows Zajas to broaden the theoretical scope of the scholarship on the social and organizational conditions of translation.

Who Needs the Book? Copyright in the Late Print Epoch

Author(s): Alicja Pałęcka,Maciej Jakubowiak / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2016

The authors analyse the relationships that came into being within the literary field in Poland after 1989, with reference to the question of copyright as well as the process of print remediation. Their analysis is based on pronouncements by actors with in the field – pronouncements that have been collected during a sociological investigation across Poland. The point of departure is a recognition of the divergent ways in which writers and publishers articulate their own interests. Both groups express a strong attachment to the book as an object (an attachment related to conservative distribution models), and yet they disagree on the question of copyright protection. This article contributes to our understanding of the ways in which the two groups’ different interests can be articulated with the help of identical figures.

Digital and Print Hybrids

Author(s): Jarosław Kopeć,Izabela Koryś,Dominika Michalak / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2016

In 2014 the National Library of Poland commissioned a survey to create a typology of Internet users. Building on that typology, the authors of the present article examine what role literature sourced and read online plays within reading practices. Their focus on the social adaptation of modern technology, on issues related to reading literary texts online, on diagnosing how the Internet facilitates access to literature, and on situating digital practices in the context of analogue ones.

On Polish Memory Studies

Author(s): Justyna Tabaszewska / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2016

In-Between-Space. Anthropologies of Everyday Life, of the City and of Literature in Miron Białoszewski’s Chamowo

Author(s): Agnieszka Karpowicz / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2016

This article builds on and supports Roch Sulima’s claim that Miron Białoszewski’s works, saturated with anthropology, can serve as an inspiration to anthropologists of everyday urban life. Focusing on the poetics of space in Chamowo, Karpowicz examines how a literary relationship to urban spaces intersects with their artistic creation. This creation not only problematizes the experience ability of urban spaces, but it also represents an anthropological perspective in research on everyday urban life as postulated and realized by Sulima. Reading Białoszewski’s Chamowo through such lenses as anthropology of everyday life, auto-ethnography, contemporary research on urban spaces and geopoetics, Karpowicz demonstrates the enormous significance of literature for the study of urban spaces within the humanities. Her article also highlights the motif of the city and of the above-mentioned research contexts as key for the task of interpreting a work of literature that self-consciously thematizes its biographical and geographical rootedness

Jews and Their Language in Wujek’s Bible 1599

Author(s): Rajmund Pietkiewicz / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

The author, on the basis of the study of the commentaries and prefaces to Wujek’s Bible of 1599, depicts the image of the Jews, their language and their customs as it was presented by Jakub Wujek and his contemporaneous fellow Jesuits. The author refers to the sources of the information contained in Wujek’s Bible, evaluates it in the context of the religious situation in the Renaissance Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and attempts at establishing the realm and power of the influence it had on readers.

Judaizing and Identity in the earliest Transylvanian Sabbatarian Writings (1588? – 1621)

Author(s): Réka Újlaki-Nagy / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

The denominational and national identity of Transylvanian Sabbatarians (‘Judaizers’) has been constantly debated since the mid-19th century discovery of Sabbatarian literature. The question has always been haunted by mythologizing tendencies. The absence of something that was a given in the case of other denominations – that is, reflection on their native land and their nationality – was explained in terms of denominationally and nationally biased standpoints. Although most scholars had their own opinion about this question, no one has tried to perform a detailed inquiry into the problem, based on the texts themselves, and within a context of the Sabbatarians’ attitude to Jews. The present essay tries to address this problem. Utilizing a relevant set of keywords, I try to identify the signs of identity-creation in the earliest extant texts, and I also try to explore the Sabbatarian perception of Jews. My investigation reinforces the hypothesis that the absence of a patriotic voice is rooted in the theological advance towards Jews. Although the perception of the Jews is not entirely positive in Sabbatarian texts, their role is unique, making them essential for salvation. This indicates the later direction of the formation of Sabbatarian national and denominational identity, which is a gradual movement towards Jewishness, leading to ‘assimilation’ later.

Международен научен форум „Българистиката по света, филологията у дома“

Author(s): Boyka Ilieva,Bilyana Todorova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 37/2018

In memoriam Василка Тъпкова-Заимова

Author(s): Anisava Miltenova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 37/2018

Академик Петър Динеков и хуманитарната наука – идеи, позиции, концепции

Author(s): Anisava Miltenova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 37/2018

„Случаят Светлозар Игов“ и други „недостоверни“ случаи…

Author(s): Evelina Belcheva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2019

Talks with Svetozar Igov mirror the innermost spiritual autobiography of a scientist, his experience in/with literature. But “Svetozar Igov case” is not only a personal biografema. In it – differently – looking and spiritual biography of a generation in Bulgarian literature. This is a sign, symptomatic episode, it must be meaningful as such. Fraying will shed light on many other “improbable” cases. Although every fate is unique in its own way ... But in his case be removed fate of many of this generation whose personal destinies will remain “listed” and will sink into the darkness as “implausible” ... In the second, interpretive part of Antonia Velkova Igovs personality is a mirror in “high waters” of humanitarian thought, social psychology, cultural anthropology.