The Image of the Town: Medieval Sofia in Original Bulgarian Works from the 16th Century
Journal Title: Studia Ceranea. Journal of the Waldemar Ceran Research Centre for the History and Culture of the Mediterranean Area and South-East Europe - Year 2015, Vol 5, Issue
Abstract
The paper follows out the way of denomination and description of Sofia town in manuscripts from different genre during the period of the 15th –17th centuries, namely: the original hagiographic and hymnographic works of the men of letters from the 16th century Sofia literary school; the bedrolls; some marginal notes. This type of sources is rich enough not only for shaping the image of the town according to the linguistic evidences it was depicted with, but for making some general conclusions about its place in the so called “linguistic world view” as a semiotic model for approaching the lifestyle, the spiritual culture and the Bulgarian ethnic consciousness during the Ottoman domination. The chosen frame of time is not hazardous. It was a transitory period for both naming process and the creation of a new cultural situation, when the ideological and political dominant of the medieval town (the capital in particular) as an incarnation of the ruler’s institution has been already changed. Moreover, with the fall of Constantinople in 1453 the very Byzantine prototype of the town-mother and the spiritual center of the Orthodox world were destroyed. It is a matter of scholarly interest to give an idea on how another, different (new) model of the town was created in the Bulgarian cultural space to replace the past glorious vision, and how it reproduced the tradition. Briefly, how does the text create an image? It is a way to introduce the notion of hierotopy and its language in the original Bulgarian works of the given period. The specifically Bulgarian material inscribes itself in the common typological frames of the Balkan medieval culture in Ottoman times. The paradigm of holiness and the formation of the holly space require those aspects to be carried out in the light of the complex interdependency between the text, the image and the historical context – a binding triad that will be the base for the attending presentation.
Authors and Affiliations
Mariyana Tsibranska-Kostova
Book Reviews: Abū Ğa‘far Muhammad Ibn Ğarīr At-Tabarī, Historia proroków i królów. Z dziejów Bizancjum (do połowy VII wieku) [History of the Prophets and Kings. Byzantine History (to the middle 7th c.)]. Z języka arabskiego przetłumaczył, wstępem i komentarzami zaopatrzył Filip Andrzej Jakubowski, Instytut Historii UAM, Poznań 2011, pp. 207 [= Źródła, 2].
Book Review.
Book Reviews: Mary Beard, Pompeii. The life of a Roman town, Profile Books, London 2008, pp. 360 [Polish translation – Pompeje. Życie rzymskiego miasta, trans. N. Radomski, Dom Wydawniczy REBIS, Poznań 2010, pp. 414].
Book Review.
Book Reviews: Anna Kotłowska, Zwierzęta w kulturze literackiej Bizantyńczyków [Animals in Byzantine literary culture] – ᾽Αναβλέψατε εἰς τα πετεινὰ..., Wydawnictwo UAM, Poznań 2013, pp. 262.
Book Review.
Book Reviews: ADRIAN SZOPA, Flavius Merobaudes. Wódz i poeta z V wieku [Flavius Merobaudes. General and Poet from the 5th century], Wydawnictwo AVALON, Kraków 2014, pp. 240.
Book Review.
(Post)Modern Apocrypha as an Epiphany of Sense (on the Basis of Bulgarian Literary Biblical Paraphrases)
The paper is devoted to the author’s concept of modern apocrypha in the context of the two main tendencies of (Post)modernity: unmasking and paraphrasing. On the basis of the literary paraphrases of the Evangelical story...