Colloquia Comparativa Litterarum publishes studies in Comparative Literature with an emphasis on the European literatures, in particular on the Balkan issues and mainly regarding the period from 18th century until today.
Софийски университет "Св. Климент Охридски", Факултет по славянски филологии
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Literaturni ili kulturologichni sravnenia?
Roads and Trails of the Europeanism in the Balkans. In honor of the 50th anniversary since the Institute for Balkan Studies & Center of Thracology foundation.
Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Vladimir Trendafilov. The Uses of the British Mentor: Charles Dickens’s Reception in Bulgaria.
TÖTÖSY de ZEPETNEK, Steven, and Tutun MUKHERJEE (Ed.). Companion to Comparative Literature, World Literatures, and Comparative Cultural Studies. New Delhi, Cambridge University Press India Pvt. Ltd., 2013, 528 p.
Migrating cultures and social practicies
Cultures migratoires et pratiques sociales/Migrating Cultures and Social Practicies.
Статията тръгва от съвременната политическа ситуация във Великобритания, от съпротивата срещу приемането на имигранти от бившите „източноевропейски“ страни. Ситуацията изглежда странно позната; оказва се, че отказът да възприемеш „другия“ като свой има прецедент в един от най-ранните пътеписи за България, написани от английски пътешественици. Представен е сравнително подробно и самият пътепис: Residence in Bulgaria; or Notes on the resources and administration of Turkey: The Condition and character, manners, custom, and language of the Christian and Mussulman populations, with reference to the Eastern Question; негови автори са Станислас Сейнт Клер, пенсиониран капитан, и Чарлс Брофи. Втората част на статията прави типологическа съпоставка на културната ситуация с едно явление от началото на XXI век: романи върху комунистическото минало на България, създадени и публикувани най-напред в чужбина от български писатели имигранти. Изводите са направени с методологията на съвременните постколониални изследвания.
Les contes folkloriques dans la dramaturgie symboliste
The paper examines the selection, structuring and dramatic rendition of the fairy tale plots in the Francophone and the Slavic symbolist dramas, to point out their typological resemblances and inner richness. The study finds out that rewriting the magic stories and their syncretic approach characterize both theatres and mark out their similitudes. However, the Francophone symbolists attempt to intensify the universal and mystical meaning of the folktales. On the other hand, the Slavic authors insert some national and parodic trends in their plays, strengthen the art synthesis and anticipate, in that way, the dramatic experiments in the European vanguards.
Torn by ideological and identity stresses (existential ruptures in posse et in esse), Trieste has lived the European tensions looking for an impossible balance between the Austro-Hungarian cosmopolitanism and the affirmation of national cultures. With an application of the centre/margin paradigm, we intend to consider the role of the peripheral literature of this city – namely, the role of the literature of its ethnic minorities, especially the literary production of the Slovene minority. The work of Boris Pahor will help us to particularize the subject of this essay, which aims to grasp the "differential fact" expressing the singularity of the comparative approach.
The museum and its usages in two Balkan novels
This article examines the possible concept of the museum in literature – a ‘museum’ not only like a metaphor but also like a specific type of novel. This is an attempt to trace the possible meetings (or usages) of two Balkan novels – Dubravka Ugrešić`s historical museum and Elif Shafak’s literary harem. The focus of the study is on the never-ending quest and the search for human multifacetedness and human completeness. In her autobiographical novel Black Milk: On Writing, Motherhood and the Harem Within Elif Shafak is trying to ‘arrange’ her own literary museum. She was able to gather in her ‘collection’ women writers like Zelda Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath, Sevgi Soysal, Halide Edib, Ayn Rand, etc. In The Museum of Unconditional Surrender Dubravka Ugrešić was able to collect, preserve and show (without apparent connection between them) the fragments/photographs/books of her own biography as a kind of ‘museum’ novel.
Thomas Mann dealt with the topic of Europe on several levels: literary, theoretically and in the course of time. In his novel The Magic Mountain, the – symbolically speaking – “sick Europe” is meeting in a Swiss sanatorium. André Gide, who is like Thomas Mann a European in spirit, commented on Mann’s essay “Achtung, Europa!” (1936) with these words: “Mann reste […] un humaniste dans le sens le plus plein du mot.” Hans-Magnus Enzensberger – poet and critical observer of European developments – counters this humanistic idea of Europe with a new concept in, among other texts, “Eurozentrismus wider Willen” and Ach Europa (Europe, Europe: Forays Into a Continent), which can be considered a mixture of essay and literary travelogue. Enzensberger opposes the political and economic attempts at harmonization imposed from Brussels and emphasizes the cultural distinctions of each individual European country. Linked to this commitment to alterity is a postmodern concept, which at the same time questions the grown humanistic discourse on Europe.
Progrès techniques et métamorphoses des espaces européens au XIXe siècle
L’article s’attache à deux aspects particuliers concernant les métamorphoses de l’espace en Europe au cours du XIXe siècle: celui de l’espace urbain nocturne sous l’empire des nouvelles techniques d’éclairage, ensuite la conscience de la globalisation des espaces culturels qui est en train de naître à l’exemple de Théophile Gautier qui en attribue la cause au développement des moyens de communication.
Major histories, minor literatures, and world author
In his article "Major Histories, Minor Literatures, and World Authors" Theo D'haen discusses how the idea of world literature has made a remarkable comeback in literary studies. A major feature of this revival has been increased attention from a "world perspective" to literatures until recently little studied beyond disciplinary boundaries, particularly so some "major" literatures such as Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and various Indian-language literatures. As such, these literatures have come to join what has usually been thought of as "European" world literature. What this move, however to be welcomed in itself, obscures is the even further peripheralization of a number of "smaller" literatures, amongst them many European ones. Thus world literature in its newly emerging guise is merely upping the ante for such minor literatures, or, alternatively, reshaping such literatures in the image and interest of the few "major" literatures which are deemed worthy of inclusion in the "new" world literature.
Electronic journals, prestige, and the economics of academic journal publishing
In their article "Electronic Journals, Prestige, and the Economics of Academic Journal Publishing," Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek and Joshua Jia discuss the current state of the academic journal publishing industry. The current state of the industry is an oligopoly based on a double appropriation model where academics produce work at no cost only to have publishers earn significant profit margins by selling the work back to academics. Publishers are able to do this given the price inelasticity and weak bargaining power of their main consumer, university libraries. Publishers' ability to increase prices is also supported by what the authors term the "prestige multiplier effect" and the "prestige crowd-out effect," which refers to the tendency for libraries to cut small publishers as large publishers raise prices because large publishers are more prestigious. To date, the usage of electronic journals has not changed this general model. Tötösy de Zepetnek and Jia argue that in order to progress towards a more equitable model of knowledge management, allowing for the dissemination of knowledge globally and against the "colonialism of knowledge," a change in attitude and practices is required not only by publishers but also by academics. Once perceptions change and electronic journals obtain prestige, the publishing of scholarship electronically will replace or at least parallel the prestige of print journals.
The paper opens by briefly outlining the development of women’s literature in the ex–East European countries since 1989. Then it turns to feminist literary theory, tracking two different periods of its reception by and adaptation to literary criticism in post-communist academic research. The concepts of women’s generations and women’s literary canon, vital for the Western tradition of gynocriticism, are closely analyzed in relation to their relevance to present-day women’s literature in post-communist culture. The paper closes by outlining a threefold model of the perspective from which to speak of women’s literature embedded in, or in counter-stance to, the traditional literary canon.
A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma
This article deals with the widespread assumption that a significant collection of texts known as the Bible is inherently ‘deceptive’. That is, the Bible does not – it is assumed – say what was ‘really’ going on in the ancient world. The truth, therefore, must be found by going behind or beneath the text (the spatial metaphors should be noted). Here the real story may be found through archaeology or by reading the text against itself. This approach may be described as a modernist ‘depth model’, in which the surface attempts to conceal the truth, while the truth itself must be found by going around the surface text. This remains a dominant approach in biblical criticism. However, it cannot be understood without earlier and indeed, in some quarters, current assumptions concerning the realist nature of the text. In this case, the text reflects in a reasonably trustworthy fashion the context of the text, if not the ideological assumptions and positions of the putative authors. Modernist ‘depth models’ may then be seen as attempts to respond to realist assumptions. A third moment is what could be called postmodern: in this case, the distance between surface and depth is challenged, so that the various possibilities become equal contestants for the dominant position. This entails a shift away from the assumption of a singular truth of the text, characteristic of both realist and modernist assumptions, to the understanding of multiple truth claims – not as relative but as absolutes that permit other absolutes. The argument emphasises that these approaches should be seen as dialectically related to one another, rather than as mutually exclusive approaches.
How to compensate for the loss of beauty?
This article examines Southeast-European stories and novels, where for the first time a rejection of the Beautiful in favour of scientific perception can be observed: "Dimo the Orderly" by Gheorghi P. Stamatov (1869-1942), "Parasites" by Barbu Delavrancea (1858-1918), "Rich and Poor" by Grigorios Xenopoulos (1867-1951) are compared with Emile Zola’s (1840-1902) "Nana". These similar themes and topics (the class division of society, the interest in the poor, heredity, pathology, symbolized by money, illness, and death) provide arguments in order to emphasize the existence of a common "system of European values" in a much broader perimeter than that of Western literatures. Thanks to the ideas of literary Naturalism, the materialistic view of life, scientifically legitimized during the Nineteenth century, obtained the credibility to be seen as a literary value. From a literary perspective, we are faced with an objective position of the narrator, adopted by writers (at the expense of the Beautiful, considered until that point as an intrinsic aesthetic value and essential to the art). This article applied the Triangular Pattern, introduced by the author, which implies a constant referring to the phenomena common to European literatures and does not recommend that scholars remain incarcerated within the study of parallels between Southeast-European literatures.
materialistic perception as a criterion of literary value
triangular pattern in Comparative Literature
This paper examines Corsican and Romanian traditions of mountainous shepherds in the context of the magic quest for milk. This quest is narrated in the tales and in the legends and it is embodied by the magic traditional characters as Corsican Salamone and Romanian Solomonar. Corsican Salamone would like to be the magic specialist of the brocciu’s creation and fabrication. But he can’t. Why? We will try to answer to this question. The brocciu is Corsican typical cheese. Solomonar is a Romanian weatherman who requests for the eggs and for the milk in his village. Why? We will try to answer to this second question. Finally, both characters Salamone and Solomonar are a re-appropriation of the famous mythical character in the Grimoires books, Solomon. This comparative research aims to understand his symbolical role in this ritual quest transformed in the popular narrative tradition.
Copyright (c) 2025 Olena Picciocchi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The article examines the special role of the journey - spiritual and physical, in three novels by immigrant authors from the Balkans: Paris-Athens by Vassilis Alexakis, Hotel Europe by Dumitru Tsepeneag and Murder in Byzantium by Julia Kristeva. Represented is the idea that, by leaving his motherland, the immigrant could never attach himself the same way to any place and be fully accepted in the new community. Thus, his constant movement appears as a peculiar reaction to this specific ‘uprooting’ and becomes a way of life and thinking – i.e. a modern ‘nomadism’.
La réception de F. G. Lorca à l’école littéraire de Thessalonique
The poetry school of Thessaloniki, considered as a simple trend by the modern Greek critics, influenced significantly the reception of modernism by the modern Greek literature. The Greek translations of modernist writers, mostly prose writers (V. Woolf, M. Proust, J. Joyce), appeared in the literature reviews of Thessaloniki. Few studies have focused on the field of poetry, where the work of F. G. Lorca had a major impact on various poetic tendencies defined by the left-wing or idealist poets of Thessaloniki. This article aims to study the influence on the poetic existence of certain of poets of Thessaloniki.
Le journal à la recherche de la beauté transcendante
This article begins with a reading of a diary which is not explicitly “literary”; namely, the diary of the theologian Father Alexander Schmemann; it continues with A Writer’s Diary by Fyodor Dostoevsky and ends with the “diary of a country priest” from the novel of the same name by the French author Georges Bernanos. Under what conditions, to what extent and from what angle can we compare the journals of a renowned theologian, a well-known novelist like Dostoevsky and an anonymous novel character? The three texts turn out to be united by the search for an interface between everyday life and transcendent reality, as well as by the fact that in all three cases this interface is found through the revelation of “transcendent beauty” (as beauty simultaneously being and not being part of this world). The texts also have in common the fact that beauty was discovered in each case through an experience that marked the existence of the diarists and gave them strength to follow their life paths to the end.
Sartre’s theory of temporality in Being and Nothingness in Anglo-American academic discourse
The study “Sartre’s Theory of Temporality in Being and Nothingness in Anglo-American Academic Discourse” presents in some detail Sartre’s ideas of time in his magnum opus Being and Nothingness (L’Être et le néant, 1943). The topic is dictated by the fact that these ideas have not been fully discussed by original philosophical literature in Anglo-American academia (English translations from French are not considered). The essay details three topics. The first, introductory part outlines the way Sartre’s theory of temporality in Being and Nothingness has or, rather, has not been fully analyzed in the specialized and popular philosophical literature in English. The overview covers some 65 titles on Sartre, existentialism, and phenomenology. The second section delineates Sartre’s theory of temporality in Being and Nothingness. The final part speaks of Sartre’s ideas of time in his literary criticism, namely, in his essay “On The Sound and the Fury: Time in the Work of Faulkner.”
Laurence Sterne’s ‘Noseology’ and the making of Gogol’s the nose
It has become a tradition to use the succession of Gogol’s short novel The Nose from Laurence Sterne’s Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy as a key to its interpretation, and to identify its kinship to the ‘noseology’ in 1820s’ and 1830s’ Russian literature and the peculiar type of Russian Sternianism, which originated as a result of the novel’s reception in Russia. In this research perspective, set originally by V. V. Vinogradov, so much work has been completed that its potential seems to have been exhausted. Nevertheless, certain vagueness and several logical gaps have been identified in the established visions about Sterne’s influence on Gogol. The task of the present study is to bridge these inadequacies and to clarify the mechanisms that helped transform Sterne’s ‘noseology’ into the puzzling world of Gogol’s The Nose. The examination conducted in this paper demonstrates that the essential link between the whimsical logic of Gogol’s short novel, and especially the paradoxical substantiation of the theme of the nose in it, on the one hand, and Sterne’s novel Tristram Shandy, on the other, is manifested as re-actualization of an entire network of motifs that were established by the source novel and were reproduced in specific ways both in The Nose and in Gogol’s other works. As a result of this process, strange associative groupings that seem to have been deprived of meaning were set firmly as fixed configurations. A characteristic of the specific mechanism manifested in Gogol’s autotextuality is the fact that the cluster of interconnected images and notions issuing from Sterne’s novel was repeated again by means of varying combinations of elements. Each of these single derivative substantiations is incomplete with regard to the paradigm, and though inexhaustible and scattered throughout various texts by Gogol, they still remain recognizable parts of a common constellation, whose prototype was created by Sterne.
In the year 1860, Ivan Turgenev delivered a speech at a public reading entitled "Hamlet and Don Quixote". In it, he commented on the concept of man and world (Weltanschauung) which emerged from the English play and the Spanish novel. However, the philosophical and moral interpretation, which he proposed, referred to Tsarist Russia and the problems of the reforms under Alexander II. For example, there existed a clear link between the speech and Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons („Отцы и дети“). Hamlet and Don Quixote remind us mainly of the European fates of these two myths, especially the operas Hamlet (1868) by Ambroise Thomas and Don Quichotte (1910) by Massenet. In the early period of Mannerism and Baroque, Hamlet and Don Quixote were accompanied by a third hero: Dr. Faustus, (a legacy from Marlowe), who too, after many relays, inspired the composer Gounod for his famous opera Faust (1859). All this brings us back to the Salon Viardot, whose hosts were close friends with Turgenev. It is easy to imagine that Turgenev was also inspired by the modern commentaries of Sismondi and Louis Viardot. There are many links between West Europe and Russia, between literature and the history of French opera.
The concept of affinity will be discussed as a concept likely to replace the outdated notion of influence, or the more recent, but no less problematic notion of reception, each of them implying the idea of a connection. The term affinity will break the vicious circle of direct or indirect contacts between literatures. This concept is different also from typological comparisons, because inter-literary affinities are not necessarily conditioned by the stage of social development of each context. Cultural Studies, which have been rying to cover aggressively the whole field of studies in the humanities, do not correspond to our efforts either, because they tend to thin out literary specificity into ideological messages (postcolonial, linked to minorities and protest). The proposed approach consists in juxtaposing novels that deal with contemporary issues of the first half of the 20th century all over Europe, including the topic of the Modern City, the Independent Woman, the lack of cognoscibility of the Other – newly emerged themes that correspond to the demographic, psychoanalytic, and philosophical concerns of the time. Novels by Colette, Camil Petrescu, and Yana Yazova, belonging to French, Romanian and Bulgarian literature, respectively, will be used to provide examples in that regard. The unconventional comparison revealed hesitation as a general principle of construction of the three novels.
Pars pro toto. Proceedings of the Literature Session of the 11th CONGRESS OF SOUTH-EAST EUROPEAN STUDIES
European psychological novel of the first half of the 20th century
hesitation as the text’s principle of construction
The fall of communism means liberty of expression, among other things. Contemporary writers tackle topics that were either considered taboo, or were censored under communism, and they portray an immediate reality that reflects everyday society. One important element is the depiction of disease in the works written after 1989, namely from a perspective that pays great attention to the body. Diseases such as AIDS and syphilis terrify people, even though they are treatable and being kept under control. Departing from Susan Sontag's main idea from her essay Illness as Metaphor, in this article I explore the role of disease in contemporary society as depicted in two recent novels: Cruciada copiilor by Florina Ilis and Lizoanca la 11 ani by Doina Ruşti. Romanian post-communist society still avoids speaking about disease, because it is considered taboo. This avoidance most often frustrates the people afflicted by disease. One of the novels discussed in the article observes the relation between the disease and its symbolical meaning in post-communist society, and this is indicative of the problems people run into in their everyday lives. Thus, I demonstrate why disease is an important element in the reality depicted in the aforementioned novels, and I also highlight how illness becomes ore than a metaphor. It shows the institutionalized or structural arrangements in society.
Within the scope of this article, examples from Bulgarian and Romanian literature, which are representative of Balkan literatures, have been used as the subject of a comparative study alongside examples from French literature. The thematic framework of the Biblical creation myth, and in particular the figure of Eve, allow for the identification of common perspectives. Ever since the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, humankind has been following the preordained path of mortality. However, the Biblical narrative does not end with the fall of man. The Savior's birth atones for the first woman’s sin of disobedience, and the Virgin Mary becomes the New Eve, mother of the living. Modern representations of Eve require a change of scene as the common sacred time setting is reversed to actual reality, where the character building is done through the issue of assurance of salvation. The New Eve takes on the characteristics of a fugitive and a murderess. Based on the cited body of works by Tchavdar Moutafov, Anna Kamenova, Liviu Rebreanu, and Mircea Eliade, this is the point where we begin to single out the contemporary messages of the European novel. The French writers who have been selected as object of comparison are François Mauriac and Jean Giraudoux.
European itineraries in the geography of Bulgarian literature
At the beginning of the 20th century, Paris was the home of art, the intellectual capital of Europe, and the scene of the art of living. Among the many foreign artists and writers, Bulgarians formed an important colony. For these young artists who landed in the French capital, it was synonymous with celebration and freedom. The attractiveness of Paris, its cosmopolitanism, and the special place the City of Light occupied in Bulgarian imagination played the role of a catalyst for their creative talent. Their wanderings served as a bridge between the East and the West of a Europe, which had always been both united and torn between its centres and peripheries. Fascinated, dazzled, hypnotised by the brilliance of Paris as well as by its decay, Bulgarian writers lived the quest for identity – literary, existential, human – whose meanderings have been examined in this article.
The paper displays and analyses the characteristics of the writing of two authors from the Balkans who immigrated to France in the 1960s and 1970s – Vassilis Alexakis (of Greek descent) and Dumitru Tsepeneag (of Romanian descent). The study traces their critical reception in both France and the lost motherland and outlines certain peculiar features of the immigrant mentality and the complicated self-perception of the immigrants in the context of the dual reality of their existence. It also addresses the causes of the inability of the writers themselves and their literary characters to belong fully to one cultural heritage, and the identity issues that arise from this fact.
The European topos in the new Macedonian novel
The European topos in the new Macedonian novel is accepted as a home. Young Macedonian authors consider Europe their home. The fact that they live outside the European Union, or outside the European West, which has for a long time been considered the implicit cultural centre of the world, does not make them less European. Originally born in Macedonia, a cultural centre of the distant past that used to consider Western Europe a periphery, writers such as Goce Smilevski and Olivera Kjorveziroska materialize in their works the ‘Western European topos’ in a seemingly sidelong, but none the less essential manner. They draw attention to the dark side of Western culture and the suppressed content that official historiography tends to conceal. They remind us that Europe’s spiritual being knows no boundaries and that literature transcends institutional, conceptual, and ethical frontiers. Liberated from European stigma (fallacious moral, repressed memory, colonial traumas), these Macedonian authors reveal certain parts of the European Shadow (the collective unconscious, the historical archives full of shameful bits). No civilization is without its dark facets. That is the law of Light. That is how Europe is, composed of West and East, but also of North and South. It is liminal and intercultural. In its process of assimilating, it becomes assimilated. The interpretation focuses on novels by Goce Smilevski (Razgovor so Spinoza / Conversation with Spinoza, 2002; Sestrata na Sigmund Frojd / Sigmund Freud’s Sister, 2007/2010, Vrakanjetо na zborovite / The Return of the Words, 2015) and by Olivera Kjorveziroska (Zakluchenoto telo na Lu / Lou’s Locked Body, 2005).
The motif of travelling in Greek poetry in the interwar period
The cosmopolitan travelling of Greek poetry begins with the emblematic work of Cavafy Ithaka (1910). However ‘travelling’ will vary its meaning in the following decades and will become the turning point for realizing the despair and the irreversible loss of the ideal by the so-called generation of the 1930s whose sense of tragic doom will cement the topos of the ‘lost native land’ in Greek literature. In its wanderings during the interwar period Greek poesy shows us ‘travelling’ (act equal to separation from/acquisition of new space and time) as sadness, but also as an adventure and infinity (N. Kavvadias); as an action, that is pointless (The City, C. Cavafy), and yet obtains absolute dimensions as a bearer of knowledge and wisdom (Ithaka, C. Cavafy), while in the end in G. Seferis’s verses the voyage reaches its total disembodiment, but also its transformation into something new – into an individual/ ancestral memory (obviously the only possible island of salvation), into a transcendent immortality of a universal human consciousness.
European and national in Antun Gustav Matoš’s travel notes
The dichotomy European/national and its creative power has marked profoundly A. Matoš’s worldly and artistic credo. Two distinguished features pervade his works and his travel notes: the French and the Croatian, the modern and the home-grown. The latter two tend to unite the Western taste with the Croatian propensity for sedition. Antun Matoš’s long-term aspirations strive for a well-maintained balance of the two. His travel notes feature imagologic constructs – a realm of tableaux of every manifestation of the nation’s life and mentality, of European culture and civilization, of domestic developments and human manners. It is precisely by means of his travel notes that Antun Matoš recreated the mythological perception of his life as a patriotically disposed bohemian and an exile, whose works were created solely for the sake of art and literature; a person who disregarded largely the rest of the world. It is lofty artistic ideals that make all disharmonies in life disappear. The dynamic relationship between European and national served as a catalyst for the mixed feelings, typical of his works. Their emblematic presence made them ascend as a categorical imperative, which determined the vitality of his creative capacity, and turned them into a basic guideline for his writings.