A Central Europe Of Our Own. Postmodernism, Postcolonialism, Postcomunism and the Absence of Authenticity

Author(s): Nikola Petković / Language(s): English

This project attempts to offer a new theoretical paradigm, one that will allow a re-conceptualization of the literary and cultural histories of the countries of Central Europe—that vaguely defined geopolitical entity, which lies between the traditional hearts of “Eastern” and “Western Europe.” Traditionally, Central Europe has been associated most closely with the successor states to the Austro-Hungarian Empire (disassembled at the end of the First World War), but now the term is re-emerging in reference to the successor states of the Eastern Block located outside of the Russian-language sphere. To define and explore such a theoretical construct, however, requires a set of tests against historical data. For that reason, even before I embark on a more detailed expositions in the chapters which follow, it is important to outline here precisely what kinds of conclusions should and should not be expected of this discussion regarding Central European literatures and cultures. First and foremost, the “Central Europe” under discussion is a region of aggregates. It has neither precise geographic outlines nor a single dominant cultural tradition to which it belongs. Instead, “Central Europe” has always had the status of one of Benedict Anderson’s “imagined communities,” since it has been assumed to exist by both its inhabitants and by outsiders. This assumption has been made on various grounds, each of which play a role in defining its existence. 8 Perhaps the best way to define Central Europe is as a cross-cultural space. It is a region in which the traditions of many ethnic groups meet and blend, producing a culture with a very distinctive everyday life for the middle classes while creating a set of expectations for less dominant groups that could not possibly be met. The cultural life of Austro-Hungary, for example, had several centers at the turn of the century, most notably, Budapest and Vienna, but also including Trieste, Prague, and other smaller cities where various religions and languages crossed paths and adjusted their expectations to each other and to the absent central (and largely German-language) culture of the Habsburg nation. Central European culture and literature that I will be discussing must include literatures written in several languages -- namely, Croatian, Italian, German, and Czech. Yet in including examples of these literatures, I will be writing against the grain of the national traditions in which they usually have been framed. Franz Kafka, for example, has a prominent position within the German-language literary canon as a modernist writer; when he is considered as a Central European, one discovers that the kind of existential crisis in which his characters find themselves are echoed in literatures other than German. Jaroslav Hasek’s Good Soldier Svejk, for example, has an equally surreal journey to the war front by train as that undertaken by the land surveyor K. in Kafka’s The Castle. Both are at the mercy of an unknown and unknowable central authority that has their names inscribed in its record books, but which does not acknowledge their individuality behind their shared existence as recipients of the Austro-Hungarian justice and governance. Both characters are also from the margins of their cultures: K. as a German-speaker in a city that is rejecting German heritage and Svejk as a member of a Slavic nation that has little political power of its own. In many ways, then, the examples cited will shy away from the point of view of specialists in the various national literatures involved. Instead, my treatment of the narratives in question will re-create the trans-national and cross-cultural space in which traditionally recognized works of various national literatures have been produced. The “introduction” is typical of my approach to national traditions. It draws on statements by the modern masters of Slavic and Russian literature today, including Milan Kundera, Tatyana Tolstaya, and Joseph Brodsky; however, I will do violence to their positions within their various national traditions as well as to their individual aesthetic programs. I treat critics themselves in an event which documents the continued existence of Central Europe. Conveniently, such an event really happened at a 1990 conference at Lisbon where a discussion was held about the relationship between political and cultural traditions in an era of massive political trauma. The overriding uncertainty about “what remains” after the purported dissolution of the Soviet block allowed a free discussion about cultural boundaries to emerge: the critics and writers were arguing other issues—if all Slavic culture is Russian culture, if Russian culture is “eastern” or “western,” and if other Slavic cultures are “actually” more like Russian culture or influenced by other cultural spheres. In the rest of the introduction, then, I treat these authors as part of an event in which the existence and cultural-political implications of a Central European cultural space emerged clearly. To their voices from the Soviet successor states, I add that of Egon Schwarz, an émigré intellectual from that vanished Austro-Hungarian Central Europe who, unlike the writers at Lisbon, has convinced himself that Central Europe had always been a utopia. By playing off these points of view, I argue for the validity of the key assumptions underlying my project: that Central European culture exists as a constant behind the political changes characterizing the region over the past century and a half, that this Central European culture is not exhausted by the influences of any one ethnic group or national culture, and that this culture has a certain very distinct set of implications for the identities of its authors, intellectuals, and inhabitants. In discussing this panoply of voices, I argue that Central European culture continues to impose itself as an “imagined community” on the identities and lives of its intellectuals and authors, even when it has no official existence in geopolitics. Considered politically, the region is thus always “postcolonial”: some external power has always exerted dominance over it. Yet at the same time, the region has, for the last century and a half, never lost an alternate (if relatively undefined) source of identity as the land in between, the culture of meetings, of blendings, and cultural renegotiations. The chapters that follow expand on this theoretical paradigm for the cultural existence of Central Europe as postcolonial, yet distinctive, by presenting the work of two Central European authors. These works make the case for the persistence of Central European culture as a culture of resistance to external domination—a postmodern culture as defined by Lyotard—one that resists the imposition of external master narratives by showing where those narratives cease to make sense in those everyday lives far from the power centers of the empire (such as Kafka’s K. who can never find out who wrote the orders he thought he was following). As we shall see, these narratives share the sense of a displaced geopolitics and uncertain personal identity politics as they tell the stories of Central European characters. They are thus postmodern (even if almost a century old) because they concentrate on protean identity as a function of competing traditions rather than on the crisis of personal identity that characterizes the literature of modernism. The specific, nonlinear treatment of time employed in this study deserves special note before I enter into the main body of my discussion: its chronological organization is reversed. I am comparing authors of the 1980s and the 1990s, drawn from the West (Italy) and the East (the Lisbon Conference authors) and the Center (Schwarz, Kundera), with authors as far back as the turn of the century—also from the West (Musil), the Center (Hasek and Kafka), and the East (Russian modernists). This is intentional: just as each author is not placed within an independent national/ethnic/linguistic tradition, neither are the historical conventions of dividing epochs from the turn of the century until today followed. In fact, I believe that the geopolitics of Central Europe run counter to its cultural history. Because of its unusual colonial cultural-historical situation, Central Europe has been a postmodern culture for at least a century. Such culture may never have absorbed the high modernism that characterized the literatures of the Western colonial powers, but instead constituted itself as a cultural space that is somewhat paradoxically Western, but in opposition to the dominant western norms. That is, since it has always been colonized, and hence not able to exert its own cultural authority except within its own unwritten spaces, and since it has nonetheless always been Western (and hence fully able to understand various “Western tradition” as insiders, as well as colonized aliens) Central Europe tells its story in postmodern terms. Some of the narratives analyzed in this study demonstrate that the region has done so in prose for at least the last century. The theoretical paradigm offered thus moves toward a new modes of how literary history can be done, moving beyond simple dichotomies (East-West, colonized-colonizer) into a more flexible image of how dominant and non-dominant cultures have blended at the margins of Europe for the last century, not only at the brief fin de siécle but also now as the power blocks realign.

Lectura e identidad de género: La imagen de la mujer lectora en la novela realista y naturalista española

Author(s): Pedro García Suárez / Language(s): Spanish

Drawing on the theory of literature and different perspectives of various literary criticism schools, the author studies an image of the woman reader in the realist and naturalist Spanish novel. With this objective in mind, he has chosen the works of three canonical realist and naturalist novelists as reference points, namely Leopoldo Alas Clarín, Benito Pérez Galdós, and Emilia Pardo Bazán. This selection reflects the need to obtain adequate samples that would allow to decode various interactions between the book and the woman reader.

Köztes terek (2019. április 26–27., Csíkszereda)

Author(s): / Language(s): Hungarian

INTERFERENŢE CULTURALE ROMÂNO-MAGHIARE

Author(s): Imola Katalin Nagy / Language(s): Romanian

This volume focuses on the problem of literary and cultural paraellisms between the Romanian and the Hungarian cultural and literary phenomena. Beyond some general aspects related to the topic, the first part is dedicated to the problem of intercultural communication between the Romanian and the Hungarian cultural milieu in the inter-war period, with a special emphasis on the issue of Transylvanianism. We try to identify the reasons for which this ideology failed to become one of the main facilitators of open communication between the Romanian and the Hungarian cultures. We also hint at some contemporary echoes of Transylvanianism and the changes that have occurred over the past few decades. We wanted to make a presentation of the main regional ideologies of the Transylvanian cultural and spiritual life in the inter-war period. The Hungarians’ Transylvanianism and the Romanians’ creative localism or ardelenism alike offered a wide range of key concepts and ideas that shaped/and were shaped by the cultural context of the time. Both regionalisms – Romanian and Hungarian – shared many of these concepts and ideas, although they had never really sustained an open and efficient communication, due to a series of causes. The shifts that occurred in the self-defining strategies, the communication breakdowns that characterized the relationships between the two cultural milieus and intellectual circles, the identity discourses that can be spotted in the media of that time, and the movement known as Transylvanianism are all approached with the purpose of identifying the causes that hindered (and perhaps still hinder) real and efficient communication between Romanians and Hungarians. We also attempt to offer an overview of the effects of the cultural and spiritual flourishing that marked the turn-of-the-century Vienna on the Romanian and the Hungarian cultural discourse. We focus on the most important phenomena that the Romanian and the Hungarian cultural discourses borrowed from the Viennese modernity at the turn of the century. Among these, one can cite the types of writers, literary topics (such as the theme of the Family, of strong women, the emergence of the human psyche in literature, the figure of the estranged, etc.). The second part of the volume is dedicated to the most important thematic parallelisms between the Hungarian and the Romanian prose writings, by analysing topics and/or motives like war, womanhood, wealth, freedom and the symbolism of the mountain, etc.

Slovosled posesivních zájmen ve staré češtině

Author(s): Olga Navrátilová / Language(s): Czech

This monograph presents a detailed analysis of word order behaviour of possessive pronouns in Old Czech noun phrase. This is a phenomenon that has not been systematically studied in Czech paleo-bohemistics yet. The data analysed in this book come from Old Czech prose written approximately between the mid-fourteenth century and the end of the fifteenth century.

Gnóthi seauton: Sto let klasických studií v Brně v osobních vzpomínkách i úřední korespondenci

Author(s): / Language(s): Czech

This book is to be published on the occasion of 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University in Brno, of which the Seminary for Classical Studies has been an integral part from the very beginning. The first part of this book offers an overview of the history of the seminary in the wider historical context of whole the faculty and of Czechoslovak society, above all by means of the direct testimony of archive sources and the memories of witnesses. The second part of the book contains a re-edition of an important study by František Novotný, the first head of the seminary, entitled Gymnasion aneb úvahy o řecké kultuře (Gymnasium or Reflections on Greek Culture). This study, last published in 1922, acquaints scholars and laymen with ideas which, although we often do not realize it, form the basis of our civilisation.

Mistr Jan Hus v polemice a v žaláři

Author(s): Jana Nechutová,Jana Malá / Language(s): Czech

The new translation monograph offers several Czech translations of Latin treatises of Jan Hus. As a continuation of an earlier volume (Master Jan Hus in polemicising and lecturing, 2015) it brings Czech translations of two polemical writings of the Czech reformer as well as other minor treatises that Hus wrote while he was imprisoned in Constance. Two of these were already translated into early modern Czech and the book presents these older translations in a form of readers’ edition. Moreover, the volume contains a critical tract against polyphony in church music (where Hus’s authorship is doubtful) and translations of poems written in Hus’s honour in the 16th century.

From Queen Anne to Queen Victoria. Readings in 18th and 19th century British literature and culture. Volume 7

Author(s): / Language(s): English

The present, seventh, volume of the series "From Queen Anne to Queen Victoria" offers profitable re-visitations of old themes, as well as explorations of new themes and problems. The volume focuses on the literature, culture, and political and social history of Britain in a period when the structures of industrial modernity were being created, and examines Britain’s imprint on the global cultural heritage, including class, gender and race-based hierarchies that persist in varying degrees into the present.

Літературний образ дитинства в часи кризи XX–XXI ст. - Наукова редакція Катажини Якубовської-Кравчик

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish,Ukrainian

The monograph analyses literary images of difficult childhood from the end of the 19th century to modern times. The authors look at different subject matters from various perspectives. The most important of them are: the problem of establishing identity in times of turmoil or individual crises, the influence of social and political events on the image of childhood and childhood in war literature (which concerns World War II and subsequent conflicts, including the current one in Ukraine).

Pejzaże miasta w komiksie. Studia nad komiksem

Author(s): Matylda Sęk-Iwanek / Language(s): Polish

The book "Pejzaże miasta w komiksie. Studia nad komiksem" focuses on the study of comics, where the main motif becomes the analysis of urban space. The city is a research track, but also a pretext for addressing the issues of the functioning of comics, its structure and components. The author starts with an overview of the state of comics studies. Another important part of the monograph is the preparation of tools and methods which are important in the study and analysis of comics. The book constructs and describes the research methodology, including its new elements. The final part of the work, in turn, offers examples of comics analysis in the light of the study of urban space, also employing the developed tools. The adopted research perspective allows to use the methods developed in this book to study also other, not only urban, tropes and themes in comics.

Nikt nie chce umierać

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

The experienced and junior research workers who are the authors of the texts collected in this publication discuss different suicidal and self-destructive behaviours and reasons for them. They analyse cultural messages in literature, art and entertainment as well as those present in everyday conversations. The thematic and generational range of the research enriches the existing works on suicides and emphasizes the need and importance of interdisciplinary approach to a complex problem of human self-destruction.

Człowiek jako znak

Author(s): / Language(s): Russian,Polish

The book contains articles written by scholars from various Polish and foreign scientific institutions, which reflect on man in different aspects and domains. The subject matter is the human being perceived as a sign in various spheres: thought and language, the world, the sacrum sphere, society, literature and art. The book shows the multiplicity of contemporary humanities and addresses liminal territories, e.g. at the interface with natural sciences.

Gdzie dom styka się ze światem. Cztery punkty uważności życia

Author(s): Aleksandra Kunce / Language(s): Polish

A small thing: four oikological essays, preceded by an introductory word, on our entanglement in the “home-world.” If we were to take the title as the question, “Where does the home meet the world?”, the answer would be: “In the points that require our attentiveness of life.” Attentiveness requires discipline and precision, and it is not only about precision in actions and observations, but about our being at home and in the world, in the changing rhythms of being rooted and wandering. Being mindful guides us towards a place, and concern extends over time to finally lead us home. Home is a peculiar time(lessness); it is a dynamically understood and open place that allows us to direct our desire to what is distant, inconceivable, and unimaginable. When we say ‘home,’ we do not mean a familiar and closed stronghold but a home rooted in the idea of the cosmos. It corresponds also to the idea of Heimat. The four points of contact between home and the world are found through (1) the humanities, (2) man, (3) friendship with the place, and (4) the university. The four oikological essays look into the entanglements, overlaps, but also the truest lack of the indeterminate at the boundary of home, around the threshold that symbolically not only testifies to the boundary in rituals, but delineates the space of attentiveness. At these points where home meets the world, our entanglement in the "home-world" is brought out.

Българското средновековно културно наследство в сбирката на Алексей Хлудов в Държавния исторически музей в Москва. Каталог

Author(s): Svetlina Nikolova,Maria Yovcheva,Tania Popova,Lora Taseva / Language(s): Bulgarian

The tragic fate of the Bulgarian medieval cultural heritage is well known to the specialists. Less is known, however, about it by the Bulgarian and foreign cultured public. It is an important part of the all-round historical path of the Bulgarian people and not only does it deserve a careful, thorough and detailed study but every Bulgarian should be familiar with it. As all over the world, the monuments of Bulgarian culture of the Middle Ages have gone through the natural changes occurring in the course of time. Besides that, they have been destroyed and deformed during the numerous wars, foreign invasions and armed conflicts in the territories inhabited by the Bulgarian nationality after the formation of the Bulgarian State in 681. The written heritage of the Bulgarians from the Middle Ages is no exception in this respect. Certain specific peculiarities exist, however, in the fate of the Bulgarian medieval book. In the first place, because it was easy to carry, already in the Middle Ages in a great variety of circumstances it sometimes left the original places where it had been created, used and preserved, it travelled together with its owners along roads which have often remained unknown to us to the present day and finally settled outside the Bulgarian ethnic territories. This phenomenon is well known also from the history of medieval manuscripts all over Europe. As regards the Bulgarian medieval codices, it had certain important specific cunsequences, particularly during the periods of the 11th and 14th–16th centuries. It was precisely then that the Bulgarian literature and Bulgarian writing of the 9th–10th and 14th c. as a whole had a marked impact on the emergence and development of the Old Russian written culture of the 11th and 15th–16th centuries and on that of Wallachia and Moldavia of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. During those periods in Ancient Russia, in Wallachia and Moldavia became widespread works of the Bulgarian medieval literature, whilst in Wallachia and Moldavia even the Old Bulgarian language of SS Gyril and Methodius was used in its Middle Bulgarian form as official state language from their establishment in the 14th c. up to the 17th c. In these processes an essential role was indubitably played also by the transfer of handwritten books from the Bulgarian cultural centres after Bulgaria's fall under Byzantine rule in the late 10th c. – early 11th c. and under Turkish domination in 1393–1396. The moving out of medieval manuscripts from the territories inhabited by Bulgarians, in many cases prompted by the concern of their owners to preserve them from destruction, reached its peak in the 19th c. On an extremely large scale it began in the 30s of the century and in general ended in the late 70s although cases are known when manuscripts were exported from the Bulgarian lands even up to the beginning of the 20th c. In point of fact within a mere 400-50 years foreign travelling collectors who visited the lands inhabited by orthodox Christians in the Turkish Empire and who included many learned Slavicists, mainly from Russsia, took away large amounts of manuscripts connected with Bulgaria's cultural history. At present we have at our disposal information that in certain cases these manuscripts were given as presents by their owners who were chiefly monastic libraries; in other cases it is known that they were sold owing to the need for money and to not being aware of their value; we know that sometimes they were taken to be studied, with the promise to be returned. In the majority of cases they were taken away without any permission, and there were quite many manuscripts from which in the most barbarous way were torn separate leaves, requiring considerable effort on the part of the present scholars to be identified. In this manner was caused the dispersal of the Bulgarian medieval written heritage all over Europe, the main part of the removed manuscripts concentrating in Russian collectors. Moreover, so far science has established that actually the most valuable written monuments of the Bulgarian literature of the Middle Ages preserved now in their largest part are outside Bulgaria's boundaries. Fortunately as early as in the second half of the 19th c. part of the Slavonic medieval manuscripts collected in the territory of the Turkish Empire began to enter public depositories and to this day this process has been thoroughly completed. This considerably facilitates the study of the medieval written heritage connected with Bulgarian culture and preserved now abroad. Although initiated in the 19th c., this study has not been completed yet. It should be pointed out forthwith that it will hardly be completed in the near future. Notwithstanding the existence of enormous scientific interest in the monuments of Bulgarian medieval culture kept outside Bulgaria from the moment of their discovery to our days, researchers in principle direct their efforts to individual monuments or their individual peculiarities and extremely seldom – to the comprehensive presentation of all monuments of the Bulgarian cultural heritage in the separate collections historically formed and preserved in the contemporary depositories. In order to complete as soon as possible the process of collecting all pieces of written evidence about the development of Bulgarian literature from the Middle Ages and scholars to focus their efforts solely on its study, it is high time to proceed towards a purposeful and consistent cataloguing of all foreign collections.existing at present, of medieval manuscripts in which there is evidence of Bulgaria's medieval culture and that in many cases have remained completely unknown so far. In this respect particular attention need Russia's depositories keeping several hundred thousands of Slavonic medieval manuscripts, a considerable part of which contain monuments of the Bulgarian medieval culture. One of the richest among them is Russia's largest museum: the State Historical Museum in Moscow. One of its collections richest in monuments of Bulgarian culture is the collection of the big Moscow merchant Alexei Khludov (1818–March 22, 1882). What is more, this collection is one of the richest in the world in monuments connected with Bulgaria's written culture of the Middle Ages. Although it has been known to science since 1872 when the eminent Russian scholar Andrei Popov published the first detailed inventory of more than half of the manuscripts found in it (in 1875 he added to it the description of another 68 manuscripts) though some of the Bulgarian monuments had been researched several times or even published in full (like for instance the famous octoich of Strumica of the first half of the 13th c., the so-called Khludov or Lobkovski Prophetologion of the late 13th – early 14th c., the so-called Karpinian Gospel of the 13th c. and the Karpiniane Apostole of the early 14th c.), so far all the time in Alexei Khludov's collection unknown proofs of the Bulgarian medieval written culture continue to be discovered. It needs, therefore, not only new partial studies but in the first place – an all-round cataloguing of all Bulgarian monuments in it which should open the way for new thorough researches and show to wide circles of the Bulgarian public the necessity for carrying out such work on all the collections, kept abroad, which contain materials connected with Bulgarian medieval culture. The aim of this catalogue, therefore, is to describe briefly in compliance with the level of contemporary science the particularities of all the manuscripts of the Khiudov Collection in the State Historical Museum in Moscow that are in some way connected with the Bulgarian written heritage of the Middle Ages, also indicating all copies of original works of Bulgaria's medieval literature. The original selection of the manuscripts was carried out on the basis of the existing scientific literature on them, and their final selection was made after direct work by the authors of the catalogue in the Manuscript Department of the Museum. Thus of the 524 medieval manuscripts extant now in the collection had been chosen 134 manuscripts of Bulgarian, Serbian, Wallachian-Moldavian and Russian origin from the 13th to the 19th c. which were researched in Moscow with a view to preparing the present catalogue. Of them in the book are incorporated 98 Bulgarian, Serbian, Wallachian-Moldavian and Russian manuscripts of the same period. In the first place in the catalogue are presented the manuscripts where the Middle Bulgarian orthography was used, irrespective of where they had emerged, since the Wallachian-Moldavian codices, Middle Bulgarian as regards orthography, most accurately reflected the orthographical reform of Patriarch Euthymius of Turnovo. Besides that are included all Serbian and Russian manuscripts with respect to origin or orthography and which contain texts from works by Bulgarian medieval writers, parts of such works or direct references to them, as well as memories of Bulgarian saints or saints specially held in reverence by the Bulgarians. In the catalogue are embodied also Serbian manuscripts as regards orthography which do not contain Bulgarian works or Bulgarian memories but about which it may be assumed to have been written in the Southwestern Bulgarian lands after 1282 when they were included in the boundaries of the Serbian State and the Serbian orthography began to be used in them or about which there are data that they were used for a long time in these regions. The arrangement of the manuscripts and the principles of their description are based on the contemporary Bulgarian archaeographic practice and conform to the composition and features of the codices included in the catalogue. The material is arranged in three big sections: Biblical Books; Liturgical Books; Works of Byzantine and Old Bulgarian Writers. Each description contains several elements: 1. Number according to the present catalogue. 2. Signature in A. Klhudov's collection under which the manuscript is kept at present. 3. Title and dating. 4. Number of sheets, format, condition of the original pagination of manuscript and of the entirety of the inner book. 5. The material on which the book is written. 6. Type and dating of the binding. 7. Writing and presence of more than one handwriting in the manuscript. 8. Decoration. 9. Contents. 10. Notes. 11. Orthography. 12. Data on the history of the manuscripts after their removal from the places where they had been kept up to the 19th c. 13. Literature. In the work on the catalogue we were helped by many persons and institutions to whom we owe our sincere gratitude. With learned advice of and particular use to us besides L. Mavrodinova and H. Miklas, direct participants in the work on the project, were also Kl. Ivanova, L. M. Kostyukhina, G. Popov, R. Pavlova, G. Petkov and El. Velkovska to whom we express our profound gratitude. We sincerely thank the associates of the Scientific Archives of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, of the Archaeographic Commissionm at the "SS Cyril and Methodius" National Library and the Section on the History of the Bulgarian Language at the Bulgarian Language Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences who helped us by placing at our disposal for use their material from the A. Khludov Collection. We feel it necessary to express our gratitude to the State Historical Museum in Moscow that allowed us to prepare the catalogue and assisted us in the work on it, especially to its General Director Mr Alexander Shkurko, his deputy Mrs Tamara Igumnova, to the Head of the Manuscript Department Mrs Elena Serebryakova and to all members of the staff of the Department. The preparation and publication of the catalogue would have been impossible without the financial assistance of the PHARE Programme of the European Union. The catalogue was drawn up and published with money under the project "Arts Development Fund of the PHARE Culture Programme" after a competition by decision of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Bulgaria. We are greatly indebted to all who correctly appreciated the importance of the project and provided us with funds, including for direct work with the manuscripts at the State Historical Museum and for microfilming part of the material, without which the good-quality production of the catalogue would not have been possible. We are also grateful to the British Council, entrusted with the management of the Arts Development Fund, particularly to Mr Peter Tchesnovsky who all the time rendered us invaluable assistance and whom we consulted during all the stages of the work on the project in connection with drawing up the necessary administrative documentation. Now that the catalogue has already been completed, it may be said that the full elucidation of the material linked to the Bulgarian medieval cultural heritage from A. Khludov's Collection has fully justified our original expectations. In the process of work were introduced a number of specifications and corrections in the information hitherto known about the manuscripts (they are indicated in the concrete descriptions). The authors of the catalogue have traced scores of unknown copies of works of Bulgaria's medieval literature of the 9th–10th c., indicated in the respective descriptions: e.g. two 14th century copies of the Canon of St. Dimitrius of Salonika by the Slav Enlightener Methodius, scores of 14th and 16th c. copies of works of St. Clement of Ohrid (sermons and hymnographic works), 14th century copy of the Service of St. Cyril Philosopher, several 14th c. copies of anonymous Bulgarian hympnographic works of the 9th and 10th c., numerous memories of SS Cyril and Methodius, St. John of Rila, St. Petka of Epivat, St. Ilarion of Muglen, St. Joachim of Ossogovo, St. loan of Polivot in manuscripts from the 14th to the 16th c., etc. What is worth noting is that in her work on the octoichs M. Yovcheva discovered even unknown hymnographic works of St. Clement of Ohrid in 13th and 14th c. manuscripts, some of which contain in acrostic the name of the author and which are reported for the first time in science in this catalogue. Thus the catalogue, I hope, is of considerable scientific value and opens new vistas for the study of the written heritage of the Bulgaria people in the Middle Ages. Taking into consideration also the hitherto known texts of works of Old Bulgarian literature which are in the manuscripts of Khludov's Collection – from the Prologue to the Gospel by St. Constantine-Cyril Philosopher, the numerous copies of the eulogies and edifying sermons of St. Clement of Ohrid and Peter Ghernorizets, the hymnographic works of St. Clement of Ohrid, Constantine of Preslav and St. Naum of Ohrid, the service of St. Cyril Philosopher, works of John Exarch of Bulgaria, the life of St. Antony the Great of Atanassius of Alexandria translated by Joan Presbyter, the Story of the Tree of the Gross by Priest Jeremy, the Sermon of Priest Cosma against the Bogomils, the extended lifes of Bulgarian saints of the 13th c., the life and service of Metropolitan Peter by Cyprian Camblak, the service of St. George Novi of Sofia, among which are found works known to this day to science only thanks to their only copy, kept in A. Khludov' s Collection (like the Second Service of St. Methodius, the work of his anonymous disciple, the Bulgarian apocryphal chronicle of the 11th c., the Chronological Story of the translation of the relics of St. Petka of Turnovo of the 13th c.), it is clear of what enormous value for the study of the entire Bulgarian medieval literature is this collection. From its contents, revealed for the first time in full in the present catalogue, it becomes evident that it is a remarkable compendium for the study of Old Bulgarian literature, particularly of the period of the Golden Century (late 9th – early 10th c.), when Bulgaria played a leading role in the development of Christian culture among the Slav peoples in the region of Southeastern Europe. It is our hope that as from now on scholars will be able calmly to concentrate their efforts on analyzing the priceless monuments revelled in the catalogue and connected with the Bulgarian cultural heritage from the manuscripts in A. Khludov's Collection. It is also our hope that this catalogue will give impetus to and be a model for the preparation of similar descriptions of all Bulgarian written monuments from the Middle Ages, scattered at present in foreign book depositories. This is of paramount importance with a view to the completion of a process which has taken an excessively long time for tracing all hitherto preserved testimonis of the Bulgarian medieval cultural heritage and no doubt a topical task of contemporary science.

Professional Development in Language Contexts: Perceptions and Practices. V International Spring Symposium Proceedings.

Author(s): / Language(s): English,Romanian,French,Russian,German

The current proceedings incorporate the research results presented at the 7th Virtual International Symposium held at Alecu Russo Bălți State University. The contributions focus on current issues concerning action research in language education.

Българска възрожденска комедия

Author(s): Vanja Dobreva / Language(s): Bulgarian

In the monograph „Bulgarian Renaissance Comedy. Typology and Architectonics“ Vanya Dobreva solves a strategically important problem in the history of Bulgarian Renaissance literature: the functioning of the comedy genre in the system of ideas, forms and genre classifications of Bulgarian literature in the 19th century.

Przygody cyfrowego tułacza. Interpretacje groznawcze

Author(s): Michał Kłosiński / Language(s): Polish

The monograph presents an original hermeneutic approach to digital game interpretation. The book consists of digital game case studies which focus on different aspects of their philosophical problematic: from management of life, through question concerning their ontology, to the way they produce livable spaces and mythological stories about our contemporaneity. The author also provides a ten-step manual to game interpretation aimed at helping students and researchers alike to analyze digital games. The book features interpretations of such award-winning titles as Horizon: Zero Dawn, Cyberpunk 2077, Frostpunk and Disco Elysium.

A Treia Europă 3-4/2000

Author(s): / Language(s): Romanian

Sumarul numărului 3/4 al revistei noastre inaugurează o serie tematică inspirată de proiectul științific și formativ al Centrului de studii comparate central- și sud-est-europene, care se derulează pe o durată de trei ani (1999-2001): Identități solidare, identități divergente. Dacă am început prin a dezbate și investiga ideea de polonitate (slujiți și de analiza unor opere majore ale acestei culturi) e pentru că spiritul polonez ilustrează Europa Centrală în ceea ce are ea, poate, mai dramatic. Dar și pentru că modelul înnoitor al Poloniei central-europene și-a dovedit eficacitatea în ultimele decenii. începem cu Polonia și fiindcă Fundația noastră a beneficiat de întâlniri cu personaje notabile ale Poloniei de azi. însă și pentru că am fost prezenți nu de puține ori, invitați sau gazde, la importante reuniuni culturale și științifice polono-române.

PREȚUL AURULUI / LE PRIX DE L’OR

Author(s): Mihaela Michailov,Eugen Jebeleanu / Language(s): Romanian,French

The Price of Gold is an emotional play-testimony about the coming of age of a child who grew up dreaming of becoming a sports dance champion. A child for whom the bodies of the dancers he watched represented both rigor, discipline, freedom and courage. "The Price of Gold" is a vulnerable confession in which memories from the dance hall, from trainings and camps become a subjective map of detachment from formative moments. Remembrance is a transformative act, which gives fragility the power to move forward.

Хиляда години като един ден. Животът на текстовете в православното славянство

Author(s): William R. Veder / Language(s): English,Bulgarian,French,Russian,German

The book contains the author's study on the problems of slavonic textology. His studies on the textual tradition of a number of Old Bulgarian literary works and collections are covered. The perspectives in the development of slavonic textology in a medieval context are outlined.