Преходът след 1989 г. в съвременната българска литература. Сборник с докладите от едноименната научна кръгла маса, проведена на 5 ноември 2021 г. в СУ „Св. Климент Охридски“
The Post-1989 Transition in Contemporary Bulgarian Literature. Papers from the academic round table held at Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" on 5 November 2021
Author(s): Inna Peleva, Ani Burova, Albena Vacheva, Nikolay Papuchiev, Totka Monova, Boris Minkov, Liudmila Mindova, Milena Kirova, Gergina Krasteva, Kamelia Nikolova
Contributor(s): Ani Burova (Composer), Boris Minkov (Composer), Slaveya Dimitrova (Composer)
Subject(s): Anthropology, Social Sciences, Theatre, Dance, Performing Arts, Language and Literature Studies, Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Studies of Literature, Bulgarian Literature, Film / Cinema / Cinematography, Philology, Sociology of Literature
Published by: Софийски университет »Св. Климент Охридски«
Keywords: Transition; Bulgarian literature; media; political changes after 1989; culture; theatre
Summary/Abstract: The collection contains the papers from the academic round table “The Post-1989 Transition in Contemporary Bulgarian Literature,” held at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” in November 2021.Three decades after the onset of the Transition, the articles collected here explore its dimensions in the mirror of literature. What images of the post-1989 era does literature create? How do the contemporary works interpret the recent socialist past? Does literature participate in the formation of the perceptions and the memory of the transition? The above issues are also examined in a broader interdisciplinary perspective, in relation to the media, theatre, cinema, and cultural anthropology.
- Print-ISBN-10: 978-954-07-58
- Page Count: 301
- Publication Year: 2023
- Language: Bulgarian
Социализмът – стратегии на литературната ретроспекция
Социализмът – стратегии на литературната ретроспекция
(Socialism: Strategies of Literary Retrospection)
- Author(s):Inna Peleva
- Language:Bulgarian
- Subject(s):Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Bulgarian Literature, Philology
- Page Range:9-23
- No. of Pages:14
- Keywords:contemporary Bulgarian prose; state socialism; literature and memory
- Summary/Abstract:The article examines recent literary texts depicting life in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria. It looks at the difference in the critical evaluation and the aesthetics of several prose works which represent state socialism. The focus of analysis is on the way today’s narratives of the period between 1944 and 1989 “return to” the national literary practices of interpreting the events of the 1920s.
Социализъм и детство. Съзряване и преход
Социализъм и детство. Съзряване и преход
(Socialism and Childhood: Maturation and Transition)
- Author(s):Albena Vacheva
- Language:Bulgarian
- Subject(s):Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Bulgarian Literature, Philology
- Page Range:24-70
- No. of Pages:46
- Keywords:Transition; socialism; novels; childhood; disciplines; ideologies
- Summary/Abstract:The article aims to present and analyze several Bulgarian novels written in the post-1989 period and depicting childhood under socialism. These are mostly texts with a strong autobiographical element, which allows for a reading that focuses on their conception of childhood and adolescence set within an attempted global reconstruction of the social context in the socialist era. Another object of analysis in the article is the confrontation of private and public life, the conformity with or opposition to various forms of disciplining (within the family, the school and the work setting). At the same time, all of the selected novels place maturation – physical, mental and cognitive – in the post-1989 period, thus enabling examination of where and how the characters position themselves and their personal strategies in the first ten years after the Transition.
70-те години в пре/ход към новия XXI век, или паметта на лирическите автоантологии
70-те години в пре/ход към новия XXI век, или паметта на лирическите автоантологии
(The 1970s in Transit/ion towards the New 21st Century, or theMemory of Literary Autoanthologies)
- Author(s):Gergina Krasteva
- Language:Bulgarian
- Subject(s):Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Bulgarian Literature, Philology
- Page Range:71-85
- No. of Pages:15
- Keywords:contemporary Bulgarian lyrical poetry; lyrical autoanthology; memory; literary history; decade in the 21st century
- Summary/Abstract:The paper deals with the personal strategies employed in the creation of autoanthological lyrical works during the second decade of the 21st century. The focus is on several dominant contemporary Bulgarian poets who made their debut in the 1960s and the 1970s. Proposed here is a typological perspective that could possibly be used in future historical conceptualizations of the literature of that period from the perspective of the Transition. The observations offered in the paper are based on the belief that lyrical autoanthologies represent a gesture of conserving and passing down through time of a specific and enduring creative memory. Thus they can be studied both within the perimeter of the author’s personal field and more generally, in the context of the Bulgarian Transition as a literary historical period.
Смяната на имената като проблем на историографията и колективната памет
Смяната на имената като проблем на историографията и колективната памет
(Changing the Names as a Problem of Historiography and Collective Memory)
- Author(s):Nikolay Papuchiev
- Language:Bulgarian
- Subject(s):Language and Literature Studies, Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Studies of Literature, Film / Cinema / Cinematography, Sociology of Art, Sociology of Literature
- Page Range:86-142
- No. of Pages:56
- Keywords:Transition; changing the names; Bulgarian Muslims; movies; memory; Burn, Burn Fire; Radiogram
- Summary/Abstract:The article presents the results of a study carried out within the project “The Post-1989 Democratic Transition – Interpretations of Historical Change, Social Experience and Cultural Memory in Contemporary Bulgarian Literature,” financed by the National Science Fund, Ministry of Education and Science. The study focuses on two films: Gori, gori, ogunche (Burn, Burn Fire) (1994), screenplay by Malina Tomova, directed by Rumyana Petkova, and Radiogramofon (Radiogram) (2017), written and directed by Ruzie Hasanova. The subject of the paper is the reflection within Bulgarian society during the so-called “Time of Transition” of one of the most traumatic period of Bulgarian history – the changing of the Bulgarian Muslims’ Turkish or Arabic names which the communist government initiated and enforced, at times using violence, during the 1960s and 1970s. The concept of the modern Bulgarian nation shared after 1989 was characterized by the same heavy nationalistic leanings which had been created and sustained by the totalitarian regime in the previous historical period. Some of them shaped the social representations after the collapse of the Communist regime. Using the two movies under consideration, the article looks at some of the main aspects of the changes in Bulgarian society – the collective images, the attitudes towards history, and the problems of group identities in the new social, political, economic and historical period. Along with mass media content analysis, the study is based on numerous interviews with local people. The chosen methodology aims to reveal and discuss the sites of trauma in the collective memories.
Преходът в съвременния български роман – жанрови вариации и семантични контексти
Преходът в съвременния български роман – жанрови вариации и семантични контексти
(The Transition in the Contemporary Bulgarian Novel: Genre Variations and Semantic Contexts)
- Author(s):Ani Burova
- Language:Bulgarian
- Subject(s):Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Bulgarian Literature, Philology
- Page Range:143-158
- No. of Pages:15
- Keywords:novel; genre; narrative models; transition; post-socialism; post-1989 literature
- Summary/Abstract:The article examines the images of the post-1989 Transition, as they have been constructed in the contemporary Bulgarian novel. The novel genre has traditionally been associated with making sense of historical and social turning points. However, in the period since 1989, it has itself been subjected to much experimentation and exploration, which has also affected the way in which it portrays the recent past and the present. The focus of the present article is precisely on the intersection between the processes at work within the genre of the novel and the types of interpretations of the theme of the society of the Transition. The issues are discussed chronologically, beginning with a commentary on the images of the Transition in the novels of the 1990s and continuing with those of the early twenty-first century. It is noted that the novel’s interest in the theme of the Transition has been growing with the advance of the present century. The main conclusion is that the contemporary novel seeks new opportunities to interpret social and historical issues. Different genre and narrative models characteristic of the theme of the Transition in the Bulgarian novel since the 1990s are outlined.
Българският роман през първото десетилетие на XXI век: какво се случва с нашия „критически реализъм“?
Българският роман през първото десетилетие на XXI век: какво се случва с нашия „критически реализъм“?
(The Bulgarian Novel in the First Decade of the 21st Century: What is Happening with Our “Critical Realism”?)
- Author(s):Milena Kirova
- Language:Bulgarian
- Subject(s):Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Bulgarian Literature, Philology
- Page Range:159-172
- No. of Pages:13
- Keywords:Bulgarian literature; socially oriented fiction; novel; social representation; the first decade of the 21st century
- Summary/Abstract:This paper follows the transformations of the so-called “critical realism” in the development of Bulgarian fiction during the first decade of the 21st century. Debating the popular critical opinion that social topics are rarely met and feebly presented in modern Bulgarian literature, the paper articulates a thesis of its own; the idea stands based on the example of many novels written during the first decade of the new century. Any search for traditional ways of social representation nowadays is pointless. The paper highlights how different types of novels (urban prose, “women’s writing”, satirical novel, etc.) assimilate social themes within the framework of their genre specifics. The article ends with a summary of the observations made and the conclusions reached.
Образи на прехода в новата българска драма в периода 1989–2007 г.
Образи на прехода в новата българска драма в периода 1989–2007 г.
(Images of the Transition in Contemporary Bulgarian Drama between 1989 and 2007)
- Author(s):Kamelia Nikolova
- Language:Bulgarian
- Subject(s):Theatre, Dance, Performing Arts, Language and Literature Studies, Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Studies of Literature, Bulgarian Literature, History of Art
- Page Range:173-185
- No. of Pages:12
- Keywords:Bulgarian drama of the transition; theatre and freedom; image of filial guilt; image of the cosmopolitan homeless person; new political theatre
- Summary/Abstract:In the early years of Bulgaria’s political transition (1989–2007), writing for the theatre was in a situation substantially different from the developments happening on the theatre stage. While the latter, especially during the first ten years after the political changes, went through a period of rapid resurgence and intense and profound transformation, playwriting suffered a deep existential crisis. In the plays of those authors who had established their names prior to 1989, the crisis manifested itself as a traumatic need for a desperate revision of the past and for a pessimistic end to it. The main image of the transition imposed by these dramatic texts is of filial guilt – the guilt of children towards their parents, and the apocalyptic irreparability of the broken relationship between them. For the young generation of playwrights of the 1990s and those who came after them, the obsessive image of filial guilt was no longer familiar. They outlined a different emblematic image of the transition – that of the cosmopolitan homeless person. In their plays, children and parents live together, sharing a common space and time, their roles alarmingly mixed up. The image of the cosmopolitan homeless person has retained its presence, albeit in a new way, in the dramatic texts written after the beginning of the 21st century, where it is manifested mostly in the sharing and immediate experience of personal stories. Out of the emblematic perspectives and images of the transition in Bulgarian drama from the period 1989–2007, the only one retained in today’s writing for the stage, though in various different transformations, is that of the cosmopolitan homeless person. By contrast, the image of filial guilt has long disintegrated and is now forgotten, while the endeavour to distance and forget the past has been replaced by the theatre’s newly awakened critical attitude towards the processes and the complex dynamic developments current in the modern world.
Медийни образи и сюжети на прехода и преносите им в таблоидни литературни формати
Медийни образи и сюжети на прехода и преносите им в таблоидни литературни формати
(Media Characters and Plots of the Transition and Their Transposition into Tabloid Literary Forms)
- Author(s):Totka Monova
- Language:Bulgarian
- Subject(s):Social Sciences, Communication studies
- Page Range:186-201
- No. of Pages:15
- Keywords:media; Transition; media formats and stereotypes; media narratives; media plots; media heroes; tabloid – tabloid formats; tabloid literature
- Summary/Abstract:The classic media discourse is increasingly being transformed into a specific media narrative, thus radically changing the communicative situation and reception. Literature is becoming more and more documentary, confessional and autobiographic, while the media content is filled exclusively with accounts of a feature, hypertext and storytelling type. The present article focuses on the tabloidization of the media as a result of their integration into a specific corporate industry and on the transposition of the plots and characters thus created into the field of literature. For its part, the literal transfer of these characters and content and their saturation of the literary field results in the tabloidization of at least a part of it. The authors of such “novels” claim to be creating a vast picture of the Bulgarian Transition by using typically literary means. In fact, however, what they do is simply transposing some durable media formats, stereotypes and personages into literary forms.
Трилогията на Виктор Пасков („Балада за Георг Хених“, „Германия, мръсна приказка“, „Аутопсия на една любов“) и преходът
Трилогията на Виктор Пасков („Балада за Георг Хених“, „Германия, мръсна приказка“, „Аутопсия на една любов“) и преходът
(Victor Paskov’s Trilogy (A Ballad for Georg Henih, Germany – A Dirty Tale, Postmortem of a Love) and the Transition)
- Author(s):Boris Minkov
- Language:Bulgarian
- Subject(s):Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Bulgarian Literature, Philology
- Page Range:202-216
- No. of Pages:14
- Keywords:the artist’s world; ghetto; collective bodily presence; dulling of the senses; Transition and Globalization
- Summary/Abstract:The topic, as well as the aim of the project to examine the interconnections between the Transition and literary models, presupposes two different kinds of relations: firstly, the presence or the marked absence of the concept of the Transition in Paskov’s novels and their narrative perspectives, and secondly, the publication and the reception of these works in the social environment of a transition (1987–1992–2005). The purpose of the paper is to rethink the mutual historical positioning of the three novels and to sketch out a possible common direction of their interaction. A key to such an interaction can be found in the individual’s indelible bodily co-presence in the ghetto represented though its forms of mimicry in the communal life in the neighbourhood (A Ballad for Georg Henig), the artistic gastarbeiter dormitory (Germany – A Dirty Tale) and the “global henhouse” of the ultramodern world (Postmortem of a Love). Always and everywhere, the ghetto entices the artist in its desire to ensnare, entrap and ultimately destroy him.
Невидимото в литературата на прехода
Невидимото в литературата на прехода
(The Invisible in the Literature of the Transition)
- Author(s):Liudmila Mindova
- Language:Bulgarian
- Subject(s):Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Bulgarian Literature, Philology
- Page Range:217-227
- No. of Pages:10
- Keywords:Bulgarian literature; comparative studies; totalitarianism; metaphysics; psychoanalysis; phenomenology of perception
- Summary/Abstract:Invisibility is a theme frequently exploited in imaginative literature. However, during the Transition writers began using it even more often. In a number of works, the attribute “invisible” is part of their very titles. Such are, for example, Georgi Gospodinov’s collection of essays The Invisible Crises (2013), Ventzeslav Konstantinov’s book of poems The Invisible Unavoidable Things (2013), the collection of very short stories by Mira Dushkova Invisible Things (2014), Natalia Deleva’s novel The Invisible Ones (2017), Mehmed Atipov’s collection of short stories Invisible Life (2018). The literature of the Transition not only actualizes but manifests with added emphasis its interest for the metaphysical topics in art. This is not only a reflex born out of the rejection or neglect they suffered in the years of state atheism but also an expression of the renewed interest in them in crisis situations.
Преходът – трийсет години след началото. Резултати от една анкета
Преходът – трийсет години след началото. Резултати от
една анкета
(The Transition: Thirty Years after the Beginning. Results from a Survey)
- Author(s):Nikolay Papuchiev
- Language:Bulgarian
- Subject(s):Anthropology, Social Sciences, Language and Literature Studies, Communication studies, Sociology of Literature
- Page Range:228-296
- No. of Pages:68
- Keywords:democracy; media; transition; survey; social attitudes; economic changes
- Summary/Abstract:Based on a survey carried out in 2020, the article aims to explore and explain the complex character of the transformations in Bulgarian society after the fall of the Communist regime in 1989. The analysis focuses on a ten-year period of Bulgarian history whose social, demographic, economic and political changes are regarded as important preconditions for the cultural specificity of Bulgaria’s Transition. Among the important emphases in the study are the people’s conception of historically marked time through their individual biographies, as well as the construction of memories of personal experience by inscribing major political events into them, followed by their alignment on the general social plane. Other key results from the survey relate to the films and books favoured by the Bulgarians, the horizon of reception determining their choice, preferred kinds of music and the formation of a common musical culture. Of interest to the study is also the language of the media and the mechanisms of their transformation into an integral element in the formation among the Bulgarians of expectations, attitudes and conceptions of themselves and the world, and the establishment of the latter in the public discourse. In addition, attention is paid to certain phenomena in the domain of culture, such as pop folk songs, TV soaps and telenovelas, which enjoyed immense popularity and wide circulation.
