identity

Like consciousness and language, human memory is acquired through communication, socialization, and acculturation. It is, therefore, about both one"s brain and one"s social and cultural relations and comprises three dimensions: the personal, social, and cultural. Human memory is "embodied" in living personal memories and "embedded" in social frames and external cultural symbols (e.g., texts, images, and rituals) that can be acknowledged as a memory function insofar as they are related to the self-image or "identity" of a tribal, national, and/or religious community. Whereas the social or "collective" memory comprises knowledge commonly shared by a given society in a given epoch, cultural memory in literate societies includes not only a "canon" of normative knowledge but also an "archive" of apocryphal material that may be rediscovered and brought to the fore in later epochs. The formation of a canon of "classical" or sacred texts requires techniques of interpretation to keep accessible the meaning of the texts that may no longer be altered or multiplied. At that stage of cultural evolution, cultural memory changes from ritual to textual continuity. Cultural memory becomes complex, splitting into the "classical" and the "modern," the "sacred" and the "secular."

Plamen Antov’s “Love and Fatherland. Studies on Bulgarian Revival Literature and Culture” innovatively interprets Bulgarian Revival literature as a national-ideological metanarrative that shapes collective memory. The monograph is an ambitious endeavor to reconceptualize the Bulgarian Revival through contemporary comparative literary, cultural-anthropological, and philosophical-historical methodologies. The book advances new readings of both canonical and marginal texts, investigating the tensions between popular and elite discourses, national and universal paradigms. The text also explores the interweaving of intimate motifs – love and eroticism – with the national ideal of duty to the fatherland within Revival culture. By situating more and lesser-known Bulgarian texts in dialogue with European and American literary contexts, the author makes a significant contribution to the field of Revival studies.