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Nikoleta Patova
Europe - a threat or a craving?
Summary
In the 19th century, Europe and the
influence, evolving from our open contacts with it, become the
brightest symbol of modernity for the Bulgarian society. The attitude
of Bulgarians towards Europe and the European is dual all since the
time of the first enhanced interest to the Western education, culture
and values.
The comedies, written in the period of the Bulgarian
Revival, are among the most vivid examples of the confused attitude of
the society towards the European modernity, which attracts
unresistingly and scarily replaces our traditional values.
In fact, the modernity destroys the patriarchal spirit.
The Home and the Family are loosing their guarding functions in the
comedy plays. The moral and the physical face of the community can no
longer be protected at Home. The intimate sphere of the Bulgarian has
been left by part of one’s own and has let the other. The
families send their children to obtain European erudition and in the
comedy plots those children are coming back “infected” by too much
modernity. The ones, who are most pliable to the temptation - the
youth and the women, open their homes and the Other
enters. The very productive for the Bulgarian drama play figure of the
Parvenu appears in the comedies. This figure is the crooked projection
of the craving for Europe.
The comedy plays of the Revival period formulates in a
sentence the Bulgarian confusion on the modernity, calling the dual
attitude with the title of Voinikov: “The phoney (misunderstood)
civilization”.
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