Books by Ludmilla Kostova/ Людмила Костова
This article focuses on three English plays, The Renegado, or the Gentleman of Venice (1624) by P... more This article focuses on three English plays, The Renegado, or the Gentleman of Venice (1624) by Philip Massinger, The Tragedy of Mustapha, Son of Solyman the Magnificent (1665) by Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, and The Siege of Constantinople (1675) by Henry Neville Payne, which were written at a time when the illdefined entity generally known as "the West" today was not in the ascendant and apprehensions of the expansionist Ottoman Empire and its dependencies in North Africa played an important role in European social and political life. The plays are approached from a historicist perspective as attention focuses on anxieties aroused by the early modern European perception of Islam as an alien religion that nevertheless attracted Christians and incited them to convert. Representations of religious conversion are also analysed in terms of gender differences. In addition, each of the plays is read as a response to a particular set of social and political problems, which troubled early modern England and were re-imagined through dramatized stories of encounters between Muslims and Christians.
This is the first issue of V(eliko) T(arnovo) U(niversity) Review: Studies in the Humanities and ... more This is the first issue of V(eliko) T(arnovo) U(niversity) Review: Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences. VTU Review is a double-blind, peer-reviewed academic journal, published once a year by " St. Cyril and St. Methodius " University of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria. The journal is designed as an outlet for innovative cross-and interdisciplinary research in the humanities and social sciences: two very broad areas of study that are currently rethinking their respective places in academia and the world. It aims at being a venue for both young and established scholars and is addressed to an international audience. In an era glutted with information of all kinds, the appearance of a new academic journal, published by an eastern European university, requires some explanation. As editors we are aware of the strengths and prestige of well-established refereed journals elsewhere but are also convinced that there is an urgent need for the democratization of knowledge and the overcoming of certain historically conditioned asymmetries in its production within academia. Our way of achieving this is by providing a meeting ground for scholars and social scientists from different cultural and disciplinary contexts and enabling them to engage in dialogue – directly or indirectly. To that end, the journal is published in print but is also made available in electronic form on the website of the University of Veliko Tarnovo. The journal's subsequent issues will focus on specific topics while also including seminal articles of more general interest within a section titled " Varia. " The topic of the second issue is " Representations of Travel and Mobility from the Middle Ages to the Present " and we are happy to say that we have already received a number of very exciting proposals. The present issue comprises five articles on rather different topics, authored by people with different academic backgrounds, and five reviews of internationally and locally published books on subjects ranging from translation to latter-day literary and cinematic adaptations of themes and motifs from Ancient Greek and Roman mythology. The principal aim behind what may look like a random collection of texts is to make readers aware of the wide range of topics and research methods that we are prepared to engage with in our role as editors. This issue's first article is by a historian who discusses mass millenarian and apocalyptic attitudes and expectations in western Europe around Anno Domini 1000 and argues that the outburst of millenarian moods at the time had long been preceded by feelings of insecurity and fear resulting from decidedly earthly causes such as the danger of foreign invasions, rising anarchy and the lack of strong central authority. A historicist approach is employed in the next article which is concerned with representations of religious conversion in three seventeenth-century English plays. The author, whose main field of expertise is English literature, explores some of the anxieties aroused by the early modern European perception of Islam as an alien religion that nevertheless attracted Christians and incited them to convert. The third article engages with some of the more recent work of the American political theorist Fredric Jameson on modernity and modernism, and an attempt is made to link his theorization of these concepts to his concern with an emancipatory project contesting " the seemingly irresistible triumph of global capital. " The fourth article addresses the issue of travel writing in the present. Special attention is paid to the writing modes employed in certain contemporary travelogues as a means to build self-reflexive and unstable narratorial identities, which the article's author defines as " post-travellers. "
Настоящето издание се осъществява с финансовата подкрепа на Фонд "Научни изследвания" при ПУ "Паи... more Настоящето издание се осъществява с финансовата подкрепа на Фонд "Научни изследвания" при ПУ "Паисий Хилендарски" -договор РНИ-ФЛ-03.
Despite the recent increase in scholarly activity regarding travel writing and the accompanying p... more Despite the recent increase in scholarly activity regarding travel writing and the accompanying proliferation of publications relating to the form, its ethical dimensions have yet to be theorized with sufficient rigor.
Drawing from the disciplines of anthropology, linguistics, literary studies and modern languages, the contributors in this volume apply themselves to a number of key theoretical questions pertaining to travel writing and ethics, ranging from travel-as-commoditization to encounters with minority languages under threat. Taken collectively, the essays assess key critical legacies from parallel disciplines to the debate so far, such as anthropological theory and postcolonial criticism. Also considered, and of equal significance, are the ethical implications of the form's parallel genres of writing, such as ethnography and journalism. As some of the contributors argue, innovations in these genres have important implications for the act of theorizing travel writing itself and the mode and spirit in which it continues to be conducted. In the light of such innovations, how might ethical theory maintain its critical edge?
The book contains a number of essays originally presented at academic conferences.
Like such entities as 'East', 'West' and 'Europe', 'Balkans' defies and evades straightforward d... more Like such entities as 'East', 'West' and 'Europe', 'Balkans' defies and evades straightforward definition. To enter the region is to encounter a problem of (self-)representation. Questions such as 'Where do the Balkans begin?'. 'Where do they end?' and 'Which countries belong to the region and which don't?' are likely to be given different answers by different individuals depending on their ethnic and/or national identities or political affiliations. The resultant lack of clarity and representational consensus as well as the historically conditioned image of the Balkans as a site of chaos and political turbulence may account for the Peninsula's specific cultural-symbolic significance in a European 'poetics of space'. The book offers a critical reading of the region's representations in a variety of nineteenth-century Anglophone texts, ranging from poetry and fiction to travel writing and political pamphlets.
Papers by Ludmilla Kostova/ Людмила Костова
This article focuses on three English plays, The Renegado, or the Gentleman of Venice (1624) by P... more This article focuses on three English plays, The Renegado, or the Gentleman of Venice (1624) by Philip Massinger, The Tragedy of Mustapha, Son of Solyman the Magnificent (1665) by Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, and The Siege of Constantinople (1675) by Henry Neville Payne, which were written at a time when the ill-defined entity generally known as “the West” today was not in the ascendant and apprehensions of the expansionist Ottoman Empire and its dependencies in North Africa played an important role in European social and political life. The plays are approached from a historicist perspective as attention focuses on anxieties aroused by the early modern European perception of Islam as an alien religion that nevertheless attracted Christians and incited them to convert. Representations of religious conversion are also analysed in terms of gender differences. In addition, each of the plays is read as a response to a particular set of social and political problems, which troubled early modern England and were re-imagined through dramatized stories of encounters between Muslims and Christians.
Keywords: Christianity, Islam, conversion, gender, drama, early modern England, Europe, Ottoman Empire.
The essay focuses on G. B. Shaw’s treatment of the grand narrative of modernisation in his 1894 “... more The essay focuses on G. B. Shaw’s treatment of the grand narrative of modernisation in his 1894 “Bulgarian” play Arms and the Man. A brief comparison between it and his later play about Ireland, John Bull’s Other Island is also undertaken in the concluding part of the text. Both plays are concerned with societies that are in the process of undergoing significant changes in order to move up “the ladder of a unitary modernity” (Ferguson 167), and comparing some of their key structural and thematic aspects sheds light on their author’s evolving view of modernisation.
Choice Reviews Online, 2014
Literary Criticism -240 page ISBN 978-0-415-99539-9.
Преглед на преводите на сонетите на Шекспир на български език, някои мисли за превода
Comparative Critical Studies, 2007
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Books by Ludmilla Kostova/ Людмила Костова
Drawing from the disciplines of anthropology, linguistics, literary studies and modern languages, the contributors in this volume apply themselves to a number of key theoretical questions pertaining to travel writing and ethics, ranging from travel-as-commoditization to encounters with minority languages under threat. Taken collectively, the essays assess key critical legacies from parallel disciplines to the debate so far, such as anthropological theory and postcolonial criticism. Also considered, and of equal significance, are the ethical implications of the form's parallel genres of writing, such as ethnography and journalism. As some of the contributors argue, innovations in these genres have important implications for the act of theorizing travel writing itself and the mode and spirit in which it continues to be conducted. In the light of such innovations, how might ethical theory maintain its critical edge?
Papers by Ludmilla Kostova/ Людмила Костова
Keywords: Christianity, Islam, conversion, gender, drama, early modern England, Europe, Ottoman Empire.
Drawing from the disciplines of anthropology, linguistics, literary studies and modern languages, the contributors in this volume apply themselves to a number of key theoretical questions pertaining to travel writing and ethics, ranging from travel-as-commoditization to encounters with minority languages under threat. Taken collectively, the essays assess key critical legacies from parallel disciplines to the debate so far, such as anthropological theory and postcolonial criticism. Also considered, and of equal significance, are the ethical implications of the form's parallel genres of writing, such as ethnography and journalism. As some of the contributors argue, innovations in these genres have important implications for the act of theorizing travel writing itself and the mode and spirit in which it continues to be conducted. In the light of such innovations, how might ethical theory maintain its critical edge?
Keywords: Christianity, Islam, conversion, gender, drama, early modern England, Europe, Ottoman Empire.
INTERNATIONAL AND INTERDISCIPLINARY ACADEMIC CONFERENCE
27-29 APRIL 2017 – INTERHOTEL CHERNO MORE, VARNA, BULGARIA
ORGANIZERS: THE BULGARIAN SOCIETY FOR BRITISH STUDIES (BSBS)
and
THE BULGARIAN AMERICAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION (BASA)
Advisory Committee:
Ludmilla Kostova (University of Veliko Turnovo), Zelma Catalan (University of Sofia), Vitana Kostadinova (University of Plovdiv), Andrei Andreev (New Bulgarian University). Irina Perianova (University of National and World Economy), Kostadin Grozev (University of Sofia), Madeleine Danova (University of Sofia).
LETTERS can be written characters representing sounds, written messages, epistles, certified documents granting rights. “LETTERS” can mean “learning” or “literary culture.”
This conference aims at bringing together scholars, both established and emergent, working within one or more of the research areas studying LETTERS.
Topics include, but are not restricted to:
- letters and/in systems of writing;
- sound/letter correlations;
- letters and literacies;
- letter symbolism;
- written letters vs spoken words;
- epistolary communication from a historical perspective;
- epistolarities old and new;
- from love letters to hate mail;
- letters and the politics of travel ;
- pseudo-letters and the politics of authorship;
- representations of epistolary communication in literature and other arts;
- methods of studying letters and epistolarity;
- letters and historical research;
- editing letters;
- belles-lettres;
- the Republic of Letters and other networks.
Abstracts (ca 300 words) and short bios are to be emailed to [email protected] by 16 January 2017.