modernity

The present article places the modernity of women writers in its research focus and begins its observations with the rethinking question, what do we recognize as modernism in the late XIX – the first two decades of the XX century? The modernity of women writers remains unrecognizable to their contemporaries and even historically – the opportunity to create is aggravated by prejudices, restrictions and even prohibitions, this is a modernity beyond modernism, examined in the work of two unrecognized authors – Vela Blagoeva and Ana Karima, and both unrecognized as female presences in Bulgarian literary life, with problematic critical and collegial reception. The study highlights a number of modern ideas and concepts in each of the authors: in Vela Blagoeva – an original, non-model interpretation of historical figures, anti-racism, feminism, adventurous twists, in Karima – the first travelogue of a woman, enriched with the themes of social justice and female destiny, anti-stereotypical thinking and behavior.

The text is based on Georgi Tsanev’s big study On Historical Novel issued in three consecutive books of his “Art and Critics” Magazine in 1942 and explores the technic of historical novel composition in Bulgarian, Russian and West European works, as also the challenges of recovery in the game of realities, the different types of historical narrative and last but not least – the dynamics of writers’, critics’ and readers’ reception.