The Downfall of the Serbian and Bulgarian Kingdoms: Heroes and Victims

Evgeniya Ivanova
Posted in Workshop 2006

The Ottoman invasion of the Balkans in the 14^th and the 15^th centuries had interrupted in many aspects the natural development of the Balkan peoples. The author focuses on the idea of the interrupted statehood and analyses the ways it infiltrates the national identity building process of both the Serbs and the Bulgarians. The subject of exploration is the myth-making interpretations of the “fallen statehood” (in the cases of the Kossovo Polje battle and the Sofia battle), as well as the image of the “last ruler” (Prince Lazar Hrebeljanovic of Serbia and Tzar Ivan Shishman in Bulgaria). The myth-making interpretations of the Ottoman invasion are

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The Bulgarian Narrative about the Fall under Ottoman Rule: A Historical Canon with no Messianic Myth

Десислава Лилова
Posted in Workshop 2006

The text aims to analyze the Bulgarian way to narrate the fall under Ottoman rule. It searches for answers to the questions of why the historical narrative is constructed in such a vague and elusive way, why there is no messianic figure or epic event in the collective memory, why the literary canon is so indifferent toward this topic. In order to rationalize this peculiarity the analysis scrutinizes the initial formation of a normative narrative about the fall under Ottoman rule. It covers the period 1830s-1870s and is focused on three main areas: 1) textbooks on Bulgarian and Ottoman history; 2) publications in the press relating to the topic in question; 3) literary production devoted to the end of the Bulgarian kingdom in 14^th c.

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Post-modern conquest of Constantinople: Umberto Eco

Albena Hranova
Posted in Workshop 2006

The text is focused on Umberto Eco's novel "Baudolino" (at that time translated in East-European countries, among them Bulgaria and Romania). To explain the specific literary way in which Eco's character conquers Constantinople in 1204 the text uses the broader context of Umberto Eco's semiotic and hermeneutical ideas expressed in his theoretical writings as well as in his earlier novels "The Name of the Rose" and "Foucalt's Pendullum". The first paragraphs are focused on the relations between a holistic model of the world (and especially on the influence of "The Aleph" of Borges on Eco's "Baudolino) and the postmodern conventions with respect to the specific devices of mapping the world. Further on, the text focuses on the hypostases of the figure of the liar in "Baudolino" – to reconstruct, to construct, and to create the world. The last part deals with the "copy/paste" procedures by which the different worlds look at each other; having Constantinople both as a border and a center: it is a center of the equal utopias of the East about the West, and of the West about the East; Constantinople is not understandable and could not be articulated in the terms of "barbarians" and "civilization"; third, Constantinople as the place of story-telling, yet Constantinople and the story are keeping somehow separate and indifferent to one another, there is no passion in their coarse of exchanging signs, and in the cultural exchange between the character and the place.