Теория на литературата

The article outlines the international discussions surrounding the evaluation of research to demonstrate the evolution of the concept of "impact" – from impact solely as a contribution to knowledge, through impact as a contribution to knowledge and the economy, to impact as a contribution to knowledge, the economy, and society. It discusses two approaches to evaluating societal impact and analyses the current state of research evaluation in Bulgaria. In conclusion, the argument is made that societal impact should be systematically evaluated also in Bulgaria.

This study examines the shift in the prosecutorial strategy of Ernest Pinard in the cases against Gustave Flaubert (“Madame Bovary”) and Charles Baudelaire (“Les Fleurs du mal”), offering an interpretation that explores the ways in which legal professionals read literary works. Using examples such as the poet-detective Gabriel Syme, a character in G. K. Chesterton’s “The Man Who Was Thursday”, and the investigating monk William, a character in Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose”, the article investigates potential connections between poetry and law. These connections create legal spaces where both laughter and music become possible. Particular attention is given to the relationship between text and music within the framework of court proceedings (the so-called “courtroom acoustics”) as well as in the formation of judicial practice (understood as a harmonious performance).

The article examines the unfinished final chapter of Tzvetan Stoyanov’s “The Genius and His Mentor” in light of a recent claim according to which Smerdyakov is not the actual perpetrator of the murder in “The Brothers Karamazov.” How will our understanding of Dostoevsky’s incomplete novel change – if at all – in the case that it turns out that its plot incorporates not only a judicial error but also a cunning trap for its readers, that is, an intended readerly error? Stoyanov’s analysis, which is also a dramatic “novel about the novel,” brings the problem of doubles in Dostoevsky’s work and the splitting in the psychoanalytic sense of the word (Spaltung) to the forefront. At the same time, it constantly renews the question, “Who killed our father?”

The article analyzes allegories and metaphors in Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law.” The literary text is interpreted through the philosophical lenses of Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Derrida, Hannah Arendt, Slavoj Žižek, and Gershom Scholem. The central motif of the “door” is explored as a symbol of access to law and as a dual phenomenon of transcendence and immanence. The ambivalence of law is examined as well. On the one hand, it is read as a sacred, inaccessible authority (in the eyes of the man from the country). On the other, the law is interpreted as an intrusive force in everyday life (as exemplified by the judge’s repeated incursions into the painter’s studio). The present analysis links Kafka’s vision of law to the structural ambiguities of the legal system and the tension between legality and justice.

The following text attempts to reconstruct the notion of the highest good in the first two parts of chapter “C. Morality” of Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit” – “The Moral View of the World” and “Dissemblance.” The main argument of the present article is that Hegel does not reject or negate Kant’s propositions on the highest good or the notion itself, as many scholars claim, but instead – he realizes its Aufhebung by integrating it into the logic of the dialectic. The analysis presented here shows that, by means of the strong rhetorical language used in these most dramatic pages of his fundamental text, Hegel focuses on the contradictions, reached by his predecessor from Königsberg and finds a path beyond them. Closely following their logic, he presents a new level of their complexity. His aim is to track the developments of thought and to open new aspects and possibilities for further approximation to the maximum of the highest good, which is itself a moral experience of the philosophical thought.

This article presents a brief theoretical introduction to Michel Foucault’s concept of “transgression.” The primary focus of the research is to examine how Foucault reconceptualizes the notion of transgression, ranging from the fields of the sacred to the ones of philosophy of language and of the ontology of literature. This analysis proposes a hypothesis concerning the existence of a specific form of literary transgression that opens new perspectives on the questions of literature. The study is centred on two key-texts by Foucault, written in the 1960s: “A Preface to Transgression” and “The Thought from Outside.”

The article aims to historically reconstruct the political context in which Heinrich von Kleist wrote his novella “Michael Kohlhaas.” The juridical layer of the text is interpreted as a reaction to the introduction of the Napoleonic Code in the Prussian Lands during the Napoleonic Wars. The study reads the analyzed novella as a form of resistance to the unification of all legal systems required by the Code, following the intricacies of the injustices to which Michael Kohlhaas falls victim. In the article, other examples of similar cases of “unification from above” are provided. One of them is “In the Penal Colony” by Franz Kafka. The other regards the suggestions to use AI in legal action. For the analysis, the concept of “interpretant” of the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce is applied. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s notion of “use” is also employed to explain the constantly changing and actualizing text of the law

The text offers a psychoanalytic reading of “The City & The City” by China Miéville, whose Marxist theory of international law is reflected, refracted, and further complicated within the framework of the novel. The literary work is examined as a narrative that questions the conflict between the real and the ideological dimensions of a law. The latter, on the one hand, reifies and fetishizes space. On the other, it compels the interpellated subjects to deny and “un-sense” the world around them. The analysis foregrounds the contradictions between the repressive and emancipatory dimensions of the legal system.

The article examines the translation of novel titles containing quotations from the Shakespearean corpus. The quotation title is considered as both paratext and intertext. Translators’ approaches to the rendering of titles with Shakespearean intertext in different target languages are compared, with a particular focus on Bulgarian examples. The aim of the study is to search for characteristic solutions in translations that deserve to be discussed. The article proposes and problematizes three translation strategies: the search for dynamic equivalence, neutralization, and compensation. The collected data, which do not claim to be exhaustive, are presented in tables, followed by analytical comments. Rather than presupposing conclusions, the comparative analysis interprets the data as they are.

The reception of Cervantes’ work in Bulgaria is a complex process that has continued for over a century and a half. An interesting case and integral part of the latter is represented by the “Novels,” which have remained in the shadow of “Don Quixote” in terms of the quantity and quality of their translations, the critical approach to them, and their artistic assimilation. The study traces their gradual entry into the Bulgarian literary context, focusing on their early translations from the 19th century, made through the mediation of the French language, the 1976 edition of two of the novels, and the only complete edition from 2004. A significant part of the analysis is devoted to the translation strategies used in the recreation of semantically charged names, metaphors, realia, archaic elements, stylistic choices, proverbs, and idioms