DOI: https://doi.org/10.34680/urbis-2026-6(1)-41-57
The image of Yerevan in Bulgarian literature (paper I)
Jordan Ljuckanov
Institute for Literature, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria
ORCID: 0000-0002-6363-1585
ABSTRACT
The article investigates the image(s) of Yerevan in Bulgarian literature of the second half of the 20th century, where 'literature' is understood in the wider sense transcending fiction and poetry. Travelogues, a diary, and poems – published and unpublished alike – are submitted to close reading with two aims in mind: to test the relevance of the presumption that Yerevan-mentioning Bulgarian texts would interiorise two discourses – that of long-term historical Bulgarian-Armenian fraternity (emblematised by Mt Ararat and Pejo Yavorov's poem “Armenians”, 1899) and that of vivifying communist construction under Soviet Moscow's patronage – and to assess the relative weight of these discourses within the sources analysed. Sources testify to the domestication of the pre-Soviet fraternity discourse by the Soviet one, culminating around 1966, and to the peripheralization of the Soviet discourse beginning in 1972. This publication constitutes the first part of the study, focusing on two travelogues: one published by a politically prominent publisher (1977) and the other kept as a manuscript in the State Archives of Bulgaria (written in 1968). While due attention is paid to the 1977 book as a verbal-visual composition, semantic analysis discerns strategies of Sovietising an intercultural encounter and of undermining a Sovietised horizon of expectations, respectively. The second part of the study will appear in the following issue.
KEYWORDS: Bulgarian-Armenian mutuality, Soviet intercultural paternalism, Bulgarian travelogues, Bulgarian poetry, Yerevan.
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Information about the author
Jordan Ljuckanov
PhD (Philology), Associate Professor
Institute for Literature, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
52, Shipchenski prohod Blvd., building 17, Sofia, 1113, Bulgaria
ORCID: 0000-0002-6363-1585
Web of Science ResearcherID: JCO-3720-2023
Scopus AuthorID: 57224953295
e-mail: [email protected]
For citation:
Ljuckanov, J. (2026). The image of Yerevan in Bulgarian literature (paper I). Urbis et Orbis. Microhistory and Semiotics of the City, 6(1), 41-57. https://doi.org/10.34680/urbis-2026-6(1)-41-57
