“The People Are Ripe for a Great Fight”: Projections of the Novel Under the Yoke in the Historiographical Interpretations of the April Uprising During the 20th Century

Authors:

Pages: 353-363
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54664/EHJC7572

Abstract:

The article follows the traces left by the most famous Bulgarian novel Under the Yoke on the scientific knowledge dedicated to the April Uprising in 1876. The parallels between key theses and favourite facts, highlighted in the novel and interpreted in some scientific analyses, show a significant coincidence. In the first place, this coincidence – I hope – is a result of the writerʼs providential power. In the second place, it is an expression of the tangible interaction between fictional and non-fictional interpretations of the April Uprising – an approach specific to the assessment of particularly significant national events not only in the Bulgarian cultural landscape. Of course, some of Vazovʼs insinuations have had a long-term impact on the historical consciousness of the Bulgarians without being scientifically verifiable. Such is the thesis concerning the slave status of this nation during the last decades before the Liberation from Ottoman rule. The mentioned thesis has been rejected by historical science, but it is still alive in the collective consciousness thanks to Ivan Vazov and his great novel Under the Yoke.

Keywords:

Ivan Vazov; Under the Yoke; April Uprising, historiography; Bulgarian Revival epoch

Download

NA