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Bones of contention : the living archive of Vasil Levski and the making of Bulgaria's national hero / Maria Todorova.
LIBRA DR83.2.L4 T63 2009
Available from offsite location
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Todorova, Marii︠a︡ Nikolaeva
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Levski, Vasil, 1837-1873--Tomb.
- Levski, Vasil.
- Levski, Vasil, 1837-1873--Death and burial.
- Revolutionaries--Bulgaria--Biography.
- Revolutionaries.
- Historiography.
- Bulgaria.
- Bulgaria Region.
- Bulgaria--Historiography.
- Genre:
- Biographies.
- Physical Description:
- xxi, 600 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm
- Place of Publication:
- Budapest ; New York : Central European University Press, 2009.
- Summary:
- Todorova (history, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana) blends history, personal memory and sociology in this well-written exploration of the creation and use of the cults of Bulgarian national icon Vasil Levski. It is fitting that this study begins with a fight over the discovery and ownership of Levski's bones. From his death in 1873 at the hand of an Ottoman Turkish court, Levski was considered a patriot and martyr. His life story is woven into the narrative, but the thrust of the book is how Levski was appropriated by communist leaders, anti-government revolutionaries, popular legends and literary authors. After the fall of communism, he was even canonized by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. For Todorova, this microcosmic story of the fate of one hero is a template for the ways in which societies create their own histories, not just through documents, but collective memory, story-telling and traditions. Distributed by Books International. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
- Contents:
- Bones of contention, or, Professionals, dilettantes, and who owns history
- A "social drama" at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
- From breach to crisis
- No redress, or, Where are Levski's bones?
- A socialist public sphere?
- "Professionals" and "dilettantes"
- Recognizing the schism, or, What is worse : bad professionals or good nationalists?
- The apostle of freedom, or, What makes a hero?
- What is a hero and are heroes born?
- The "making" of Vasil Levski
- A banner for all causes : appropriating the hero
- Contesting the hero
- The literary and visual hypostases of the hero
- From hero for all to dissident and back
- The national hero as secular saint : the canonization of Levski
- The split, or, How a bicephalous organism functions
- The canonization and its implications
- Levski and the Bulgarian Church : memory and narration
- The orchestration of a grassroots cultus
- Commemoration, ritual, and the sacred
- Heroes and saints : the dialectics of reincarnation.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Local Notes:
- Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Benjamin Franklin Library Fund.
- ISBN:
- 9789639776241
- 9639776246
- OCLC:
- 227929006
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