Images of the wealthy and the poor men/women are determined by different factors. We are often prone to think that communist ideology had imposed their axiological polarization in which the poor is appreciated positively and the wealthy was anathemized. Nevertheless, similar approach is much older, it is fundamental for Christian doctrine, especially for Orthodoxy. Hence similar polarization could be traced in other Balkan Christian cultures that were less infected by communist ideology. Some scholars are inclined to connect the notions of wealth and poverty in Balkan cultures with the prolonged absence of “own” nobility and with some peculiar forms of rural community as “zadruga”.
Starting from such general premises this paper offers an overview of some representative images of rich men and poor men in Bulgarian culture, in some cases looking for parallels in other Balkan and East-European texts. Cinderella plot and the story about the abducted treasure as element of Bulgarian national mythology are some of the focuses of the study. The observations lead to the general conclusion that the discourse that idealize poverty and satirize wealth was dominant not only for 19th century.
Images of wealth and poverty in Bulgarian literature from the XIXth century
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- NAME: Nikolay Aretov
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E-MAIL
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INSTITUTIONInstitute for Literature – Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
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COUNTRYBulgaria
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Dr Hab. NIKOLAI ARETOV is Professor at the Institute for Literature, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and lecturer at Sofia University. Author of several books, published in Bulgarian, among then The Translated Prose from the First Half of 19th Century (1990), The Bulgarian Murder: Plots with Crimes in Bulgarian Literature (1994, 2 revised ed. 2007), Vasil Popovic. His Life and His Work (2000), Bulgarian National Revival and Europe (1995; 2 ed. 2001), National Mythology and National Literature (2006), Asen Christophorov: From London to Matsakurtsi via Belene (2011), Bulgarian Literature from the Age of National Revival. (2009), Sofroniy from Vratza. Life and Oeuvre. (2017), Ivan Naydenov. For Rights and Progress (2019), The varied Chudomir during its era (2024).
Editor of several collections of articles on Bulgarian and Balkan culture. Coordinator of several interdisciplinary projects on different aspects of collective identities and their representations in culture (balkansbg.eu).
Fields of interest: Bulgarian literature 18–20 centuries, Comparative literature, Cultural studies, Nationalism and National mythology, Crime literature.
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