This paper looks at a series of “fearful” translated fictional texts around the short story “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” (1856) by Edgar Allan Poe that appeared in the periodicals after the end of the Crimean war (1853–1856), offered by authors such as Todor Shishkov, St. S. Bobchev, Konstantin Fotinov, Hristo Vaklidov, Nikola Mihaylovski, Dimitar Blaskov, Pandeli Kisimov, et al. These texts corresponded to the old human interest in horrors and the supernatural that gain new force in the mid-19th century in Bulgarian literature. In this context, their similarities with the Gothic novel are traced. Some transformations of the originals in the process of translation are marked, such as the shift from anti-Catholic line to anti-Greek, and also their influence on the original Bulgarian fiction from that time.
Translated “Fearful” Fiction from the Mid-19th Century
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- NAME: Nikolay Aretov
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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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