national identity

The sponsorship during the Bulgarian Revival is part of an ancient, centuries-old tradition and is a kind of continuation of the donation from previous historical epochs. Religious books are an important part of the books published during the Renaissance. In the period 1806–1856, a total of 77 books were published with assistance, and 24 of them were religious (or 31%). Religious books “in simple Bulgarian language“ set and achieve the goal of maintaining, upholding and strengthening the religious identity of Bulgarians.

The article reviews and analyzes the ways of representing historical topics in the contemporary fiction of Central and Eastern Europe (Poland, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Slovakia). After significant turn from the western-oriented consumerist culture of the 90s and early 2000s to the search for new formulas of national identities in the late 2000s the authors from this region began to rethink the historical material. Three ways of this rethinking (and correspondingly, three groups of texts) can be outlined: the first, most analytical, innovative, and corresponding to Barbara Misztal’s „public history“; the second, intended to strengthen official national historical narratives; and the third, using clichés and stereotypes of popular culture to subvert conservative, isolationist rhetoric of current political establishment.