English Studies On This Side
Post-2007 Reckonings
Edited by
Suman Gupta
The Open University, UK
and
Milena Katsarska
Plovdiv University, Bulgaria
Plovdiv University Press
2009
Н
„Н
„
“–
© Suman Gupta and Milena Katsarska, 2009
© Cover image Milena Katsarska
Plovdiv University Press 2009
ISBN 978-954-423-568-0
“
НИ- Л-03.
Contents
Notes on Contributors
7
Acknowledgements
14
Introduction
15
On English Studies and Philology, and on
Collaboration and Contributions
Suman Gupta and Milena Katsarska
Part I Canon, Curriculum and Change
1
The Canon and the Curriculum
W. R. Owens
2
English Studies in Romanian Higher Education:
A Brief Diachronic View
Mihaela Irimia
3
4
5
6
7
Defining the Literary Parameters of Englishness
in Bulgarian Academic Culture: the Case of Marco
Mincoff’s History of English Literature
Ludmilla Kostova
Teaching English Literature and Cultural Studies
in Bulgaria: A Contemporary Perspective
Yordan Kosturkov
On Restructuring Survey Courses in the BA
Literature Curriculum in Bulgaria:
A Contemporary Perspective
Lubomir Terziev
English – One Discipline or Many? An
Introductory Discussion
Ann Hewings
Global Englishes
Joan Swann
17
45
47
61
75
97
103
109
123
3
Part II Pedagogy, Practice and Policy
8
9
Tradition and Perspectives: Teaching General
Linguistics to First Year Students of British
and American Studies at Sofia University
Alexandra Bagasheva
The Changing Perspective of Teaching English
Grammar at the University of Veliko Turnovo:
A Case Study
Boryana Bratanova
10 Promoting Cultural Studies in the Bulgarian
University Context in the 1990s: Notes on
Educational Practice
Petya Tsoneva
139
157
165
11 Reading/Teaching British Culture from
a Comparative Perspective?
Pavel Petkov
181
12 The Practice of Note Making, or Literacy
and the Study of English in Romania
Ana-Karina Schneider
193
13 The Re-trainees’ Programme in English
at the English and American Studies Department
at Sofia University
Madeleine Danova
14 Access and Equity Issues Engendered by
Participation in English Language Study
Programmes in Romanian Universities
Silvia Florea
Part III Collaborations and Circulations
15 Student and Faculty Exchanges Involving the
English Department of Sofia University
Alexander Shurbanov
16 Interview: Reflections on Collaborative Experience
Michael Holman
4
137
209
217
231
233
239
17 Between Sofia and London
Simon Edwards
249
18 The Fulbright Program in Bulgaria
Julia Stefanova
261
Part IV The Comparative Perspective
269
19 Back to the Pre-history of English Literary Studies
in Bulgaria: Ivan Shishmanov’s Academic Project
Cleo Protohristova
271
20 Myth and Ideology: British Romanticism
in Comparative Literature Textbooks
Vitana Kostadinova
283
21 Studying the Gothic Novel from a Comparative
Perspective: Issues of Translation and
Canonization
Ognyan Kovachev
22 British Literature in the Context of Stage
and Screen Arts Higher Education
Iskra Nikolova
Index
297
309
321
5
Notes on Contributors
Alexandra Bagasheva is Lecturer in General Linguistics and
English Syntax at Sofia University, Bulgaria. Her main interests
are in the fields of cognitive linguistics, meta-linguistics, linguistic anthropology and philosophy of science. In her publications she tries to unify these interests. Recent publications include “The Verb in the Preposition. The Preposition in the Verb”
(co-authored, in Bulgarian) in the volume On Man and Language in Honour of Maya Pencheva (2007, compiler and editor); “In Search of the Language Organ (Re-visiting some conceptual discontinuities in linguistic theory)” in Bulgarian Journal of American and Transatlantic Studies; issue 2 (2007).
Boryana Bratanova is Lecturer in Linguistics at the University
of Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria. Her research interests are in the
fields of cognitive linguistics (the Prototype Theory, linguistic
categorization, event construal, language and space), language
typology, functional grammar, contrastive analysis, computational linguistics and computer-assisted translation. She has a
number of publications on the relation between transitivity and
causation, the language of emotions, and contrastive analysis of
causative constructions in English and Bulgarian. She is a member of the Bulgarian Society for British Studies (BSBS).
Madeleine Danova is Associate Professor at the Department of
English and American Studies and Vice Dean of the Faculty of
Classical and Modern Languages at Sofia University, Bulgaria.
She teaches American Literature and Culture and has taught
various literary courses at other Bulgarian Universities and at
SUNY, Albany. She has participated in a number of conferences
and workshops on different aspects of American Studies as well
as in several international projects on ethnicity, nationalism,
language and identity.
Simon Edwards is Principal Lecturer in English at Roehampton
University, London, UK. He has published on the work of Dickens, Scott and Cooper, most recently contributing a chapter,
7
“Home and Away with Walter Scott” to the MLA volume Approaches to Teaching Scott's Waverley Novels (2009). He has
lectured and taught extensively in South-Eastern Europe, including Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania.
Silvia Florea is Associate Professor in the Department of British
and American Studies, at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu,
Romania. Her main interests are in higher education issues, discourse analysis, the semiotics of social difference, political
economies of language, gender, class, and ethno-racial relations
as well as cultural anthropology. She is the author of three
books: Ways with Words (2001); Ezra Pound: His Poetic Universe and Its Reception in Romanian Literature (2003);
and Between and Across Cultures: The Challenges of Education
(forthcoming, 2009).
Suman Gupta is Professor of Literature and Cultural History,
Open University, and currently Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Roehampton University, UK. Since 2007 he has been coordinating the project on English Studies in Non-Anglophone Contexts: East Europe, involving collaboration with colleagues from
three universities in Bulgaria and three in Romania. Gupta has
published nine single-authored books – including recently Social
Constructionist Identity Politics and Literary Studies (2007) and
Literature and Globalization (2008) – six co-edited volumes,
and over sixty chapters, articles and reviews.
Ann Hewings is Senior Lecturer in Language and Communication at the Open University, UK. She previously taught English
language in Europe, Asia, and Australia from primary to tertiary
levels. She worked for a number of years on the COBUILD project, researching and contributing to English language reference
materials. Her current research focus is disciplinary writing in
English by students and academics in Anglophone and nonAnglophone contexts.
Michael Holman spent his academic career (1966-1999) at the
University of Leeds, where he was Head of the School of Modern Languages and Cultures. He played a leading role in establishing and developing academic and know-how exchanges be8
tween the University of Leeds and institutions in Russia and
Eastern Europe. For his contribution to Anglo-Bulgarian cultural
relations he was awarded the “Order of Stara Planina” (First
Class) by the Bulgarian Government and an honorary Doctor of
Letters by the University of Sofia. He is Emeritus Professor of
Russian and Slavonic Studies at the University of Leeds and is
now resident in Kent.
Mihaela Irimia is Professor of English and Director of the British Cultural Studies Centre (BCSC), Director of the Centre of
Excellence for the Study of Cultural Identity, and member of the
Doctoral School of the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Bucharest, Romania. She has authored some
200 articles and studies. Among her publications are: “The Ineffectual Angel of Political Hijacking: Shelley in Romanian Culture”, in Michael Rossington & Susanne Schmid (eds), The Reception of Shelley in Europe (2008); Lures and Ruses of Modernity / Leurres et ruses de la modernité (2007) (editor); and
Travel (of) Writing (2006) (coeditor).
Milena Katsarska is Lecturer in American Studies at the University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Her publications are in the fields of
culture studies, intercultural communication and education.
Among them are Migration, Modern Nationalism and Nostalgia
for the Homeland in the Age of Globalization (2007, co-editor),
Translation Practicum: English and Bulgarian (2008, co-author)
and “The Bulgarian Connection in Harry Potter” in Gupta, ReReading Harry Potter (2009, 2 ed.). She is coordinator in Bulgaria of the Leverhulme Trust funded phase of the project this
volume arises from.
Vitana Kostadinova lectures at the University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Her area of specialization is British Romanticism. Her
publications include the Bulgarian contributions to The Reception of Byron in Europe, ed. R. Cardwell (2004), and The Reception of P. B. Shelley in Europe, eds. S. Schmid and M. Rossington (2008). She is co-editor of Byron and the Isles of Imagination: A Romantic Chart (2009) and author of Byron in Bulgarian
Context: Footprints on the Sands of Time (in Bulgarian, 2009).
9
Ludmilla K. Kostova is Associate Professor of British literature
and cultural studies at the University of Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria. Her book Tales of the Periphery: the Balkans in Nineteenth-Century British Writing (1997) has been frequently cited
by specialists in the field. Her recent publications include “Victimization and Its Cures: Representations of South Eastern
Europe in British Fiction and Drama of the 1990s” (2009) and
“Getting to Know the Big Bad West? Images of Western Europe
in Bulgarian Travel Writing of the Communist Era (1945 –
1985)” (2009). Kostova is an editorial board member of Journal
of Multicultural Discourses and the Internet journal TRANS.
Yordan Kosturkov teaches English and American literature at
The Paissii Hilendarski University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. His research interests are focused on British and American Postmodernism, Enlightenment, Willa Cather and American women
modernists. He has published two books on American and English literature, News from the Past Century and The Secret Lives
of the Great English Writers. He has also rendered into Bulgarian the work of authors like Lawrence Sterne, Willa Cather,
Norman Mailer, Cynthia Ozick etc.
Ognyan Kovachev is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the “Literature, Cinema and Visual Culture” Master’s Degree Program at Sofia University, Bulgaria. He
is the author of The Gothic Novel: Genealogy, Genre, Aesthetics
(2004, in Bulgarian), Literature and Identity: Transfigurations
of Alterity (Sofia University Press, 2005, in Bulgarian), essays
and articles in the fields of comparative literature, gothic, literature and film, and nationalism studies.
Professor Dr. Sc. Iskra Nikolova teaches literature at the National Academy of Theatre and Film Arts, Bulgaria. She has
publications in the field of literature, theatre, cultural studies.
She is also a translator (from English and German) of plays, fiction, articles, essays. Her books include: Modus Operandi or the
Collage Principle: John Gay's "Beggar's Opera" and Bertolt
Brecht's "Dreigroschenoper" (2002), Texts in Motion: Problems
of Translation and Adaptation (2005, winner of the ICARUS
award of the Bulgarian Theatremakers’ Union), Pages and
10
Stages: Theories, Practices and Genre Developments in Contemporary Drama (2009).
W. R. Owens is Professor of English Literature at The Open University, UK. His research interests are in early modern English literature, textual scholarship, and Book History. He is Director of
“The Reading Experience Database” (www.open.ac.uk/Arts/RED).
His publications include editions of John Bunyan’s Grace
Abounding (1987), and The Pilgrim’s Progress (2003). Jointly
with P. N. Furbank, he is author of four books on Defoe and
General Editor of The Works of Daniel Defoe (44 volumes,
2000-2009).
Pavel Petkov is a graduate of the University of Veliko Turnovo,
Bulgaria, where he received his Master’s degree in 1999. He has
earned his second Master’s degree at Warwick University, UK.
He has spent two years teaching English at Jinhua University,
China. His interests are in travel literature. He is currently working on his doctoral dissertation on images of China in contemporary English-language travel writing.
Cleo Protohristova, Doctor habil., is Professor of Comparative
Literature at the University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Among her
publications are: The Mirror. Literary, Metadiscursive and Cultural Comparative Trajectories (Plovdiv: Letera, 2004); West
European Literature. Comparative Observations, Theses, Ideas
(Plovdiv: Hermes Press, 2000, third edition 2008); Through the
Looking Glass into the Enigma. Literary and Metadiscursive
Aspects of the Mirror Metaphor (Shumen: Glauks, 1996); The
Euphony of Discordance. Studies on Intertextuality (Sofia UP,
1991); and Imperfect Sentences. Essays on Bulgarian Literature
(Plovdiv: Hr. G. Danov, 1990).
Ana-Karina Schneider is Associate Professor at Lucian Blaga
University, Sibiu, Romania. Her publications include a book entitled Critical Perspectives in the Late Twentieth Century. William Faulkner: A Case Study (Lucian Blaga UP, 2006), as well
as an assortment of articles on Faulkner’s critical reception,
English prose fiction, literary translation and reading practices.
11
She has been Manuscript and Review Editor of the journal
American, British and Canadian Studies since 1999.
Professor Dr. Alexander Shurbanov taught English Literature
at Sofia University from 1971 to 2009. For a number of years he
has been Head of the Department of English and American
Studies and Dean of the Faculty of Classical and Modern Philology. His studies deal primarily with English Renaissance literature. Shurbanov has translated into Bulgarian verse Chaucer’s
The Canterbury Tales, Milton’s Paradise Lost, plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries and modern English and American poetry.
Julia Stefanova is Executive Director of the BulgarianAmerican Commission for Educational Exchange “Fulbright”
since 1993. She is president of the Bulgarian American Studies
Association (BASA) and a Board member of the European
American Studies Association. Dr. Stefanova is Associate Professor of English literature at the Department of English and
American Studies of Sofia University. Her fields of teaching and
research are: English literature (18th century and Romanticism);
transatlantic relations; American literature and culture; communication and literature; myth and literature; international education. She is a member of international associations and institutions of education, e.g. NAFSA, EAIE, ARCS.
Joan Swann is Senior Lecturer and Director of the Centre for
Language and Communication at the Open University, UK. She
is a sociolinguist with interests in language and identity, and
language and creativity. Recent books include The Routledge
Companion to English Language Studies (2010, co-edited with
Janet Maybin); Introducing Sociolinguistics (2nd edn 2009, with
Rajend Mesthrie, Ana Deumert and William Leap); and The Art
of English: Everyday Creativity (2006, co-edited with Janet
Maybin).
Lubomir Terziev is Lecturer in English Romanticism at Sofia
University, Bulgaria. His research focuses on Romantic prose
and poetry, more specifically the work of S. T. Coleridge. Theoretically, he is interested in the nexus between aesthetics and
12
politics, and is now in the throes of a dissertation entitled The
Poet and the Politician in Coleridge’s Prose. He is in the process of setting up a Creative Writing Programme at Sofia University’s English Department.
Petya Tsoneva is an Assistant Professor at the University of
Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria. Her publications are in the field of
British Studies. Among them is “Metamorphosis and Identity
Construction in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses” in the
University of Bucharest Review 1/2008 (47-52). Currently she is
pursuing a PhD course in modern and postmodern studies.
13
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to the British Academy and the Leverhulme
Trust for generously supporting the collaborative project “English Studies in Non-Anglophone Contexts: Higher Education in
Bulgaria and Romania,” which made it possible for colleagues
from several universities in the UK, Romania and Bulgaria to
work jointly since 2007. This volume is a result of the project.
The editors are grateful for the financial and administrative input
of the Open University to the project, and for the support of all
the institutions and departments to which the project collaborators are affiliated. We are indebted to all our project collaborators personally and professionally for their commitment and
valuable contributions. The Paisii Hilendarski University and the
Bulgarian Union of Scholars in Plovdiv hosted the workshop
where the foundation for this book was laid. It is thanks to the
financial and academic support of the Research Fund at Plovdiv
University that this volume came into being.
Suman Gupta and Milena Katsarska
October 2009
14
Introduction
On English Studies and Philology,
and on Collaboration and Contributions
Suman Gupta and Milena Katsarska
A Conflict of Faculties?
Suman Gupta
This volume arises from a collaborative project on English Studies in Bulgaria and Romania which began in 2007, the year
when both countries formally joined the European Union. It
seemed an opportune moment for stock taking of the condition
of the discipline in these countries for several reasons. Some
concerned the disciplinary formation of English Studies in general, and some had to do with the specific social and cultural milieus of Bulgaria and Romania. In a general way, the global
spread and dominance that the English language, and consequently English language cultural products, currently enjoys has
naturally been accompanied by a growing interest in English
Studies. English departments and subject centres have burgeoned and flourished of late in higher education around the
world. However, the discipline itself – if it can indeed be regarded as anything so unitary – is currently both deeply divided
and uneven. To begin with, English Studies is conceived along
several disparate models in different contexts which seem to exist in discrete zones and do not really speak to each other. Moreover, the discipline continues to be troubled by the geopolitical
dominance of Anglophone centres (primarily Britain and the
United States), despite the global reach of the English language.
Interrogating the presumptions that appear in and from these
geopolitical centres within the broadly Anglophone sphere (from
a variety of postcolonial and marginal positions) has occupied
much of the last three decades and has made some headway in
terms of general institutional visibility, but remains an incomplete project. The pursuit of English Studies in ordinarily nonAnglophone contexts has barely been scratched as an area of
interest in general institutional terms, despite venerable academic traditions and considerable scholarly production. Thus the
17
particularities of English Studies in German or Russian or Chinese or Egyptian academies may be registered to some extent in
those countries respectively, but very rarely appear in ostensibly
panoptic or generalised accounts of the discipline. And English
Studies in such contexts continues to be almost entirely neglected in academies of the Anglophone centres. However, some
of the most interesting developments in the discipline are arguably taking place there, amidst the crossings and interfaces of
languages, histories and cultural forms. This is evident in the
English Studies scholarship that is prolifically produced in ordinarily non-Anglophone contexts; it is also apparent in English
Studies curricula and teaching practices in higher education
there, which necessarily accommodate the discipline amidst local realities and exigencies. In a general way then, the project in
question approached English Studies in Bulgaria and Romania
as case studies which could inform a larger project on English
Studies in non-Anglophone contexts – one that is germane to the
discipline at large, wherever it may be pursued. Bulgaria and
Romania both have considerable traditions of English Studies,
dynamic academic communities and departments of English
Studies in higher education institutions, with institutions which
are open enough and scholars who are committed enough to enable such a collaborative project to be fruitfully undertaken.
That briefly outlined general sense of the discipline which
underpinned the collaborative project would hardly have made
sense if it wasn’t articulated in terms of the specifics of the Bulgarian and Romanian contexts. The general and the particular
are in this instance mutually defined. English Studies in both
contexts throws the general features of the discipline into relief,
so to speak, because of specific common denominators and because of marked differences. The combination of common denominators and differences in Bulgaria and Romania enable us
to characterise their distinctive relation to and difference from
dominant and general accounts of the discipline – their distinctive presence in English Studies. The common denominators are
well known. Both countries were of the former Eastern Bloc, in
both single-party communist governments collapsed in late
1989, and both went through a period of sweeping social and
political transitions thereafter. To a great extent the latter were in
18
the direction of seeking integration with the transnational formation of the European Union, which was achieved for both in
2007. The experiences of communism, post-communism, transition toward liberal capitalism and EU accession are broadly
common denominators which impinged upon all areas of study –
on academic institutional arrangements as on disciplinary pursuits. These experiences are also marked by the differences between the two contexts, and indeed by variegations within each
of the two contexts, in ways which are expressed succinctly in
the following chapters and which I therefore do not need to try
and summarise here. As in any area of study, so in English Studies the particularities of the experiences of Bulgaria and Romania before and after 1989 and before and after 2007 were registered in a variety of ways. On the ground, in working out its
methods and objects of analysis, the collaborative project in
question was designed to take account of these. The idea was
ultimately to engage the specificities and commonalities of English Studies in Bulgaria and Romania with a view to discerning
what sort of vantage point is thereby obtained for reconsidering
dominant and general accounts of the discipline.
That is a very cursory and somewhat abstract account of the
thinking behind the collaborative project this volume arises
from. More flesh and life are added to this account in the chapters that follow. In practice, the project involved collaborations
between colleagues from universities in Bulgaria (St Kliment
Ohridski University in Sofia, St Cyril and St Methodius University in Veliko Turnovo, Paisii Hilendarski University in Plovdiv)
and Romania (University of Bucharest, Ovidius University in
Constanta, Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj, Lucian Blaga University in Sibiu) and the UK (The Open University, Roehampton
University in London). Some material was collected in Bulgaria
particularly (determined by the practicalities of funding) to inform wide-ranging discussions along the lines sketched above:
student surveys were conducted, interviews were undertaken,
curricular content was charted, teaching practices were observed, and bibliographies were put together. Some of the results
of these investigations are available on the project website at
http://www.open.ac.uk/arts/he-englishes. These investigations
and the material accordingly collected were used as a spring
19
board for discussions on English Studies in Bulgaria and Romania, and in an Anglophone centre like Britain, and with a general
global perspective. The discussions took the form of a series of
workshops in the course of 2008 and 2009: in Veliko Turnovo
and Plovdiv, in Cluj and Sibiu, in London. A core group of collaborators attended all the workshops, and other colleagues were
invited to attend each according to proximity to the location of
the workshop. Thus the workshops in Romania naturally had a
strong input from colleagues in Romania, but maintained coherence with the project’s overall objectives through contributions
by some colleagues from Bulgaria and the UK. Similarly, workshops in Bulgaria had a strong Bulgarian contribution, but also
significant input from Romanian and British collaborators. This
volume is particularly a result of one of the latter, of discussions
that took place in and around the workshop in the premises of
the Bulgarian Union of Scholars, and with the support of the
Paisii Hilendarski University, in Plovdiv in October 2008.
Having gone briefly through the broad conceptual underpinnings of the collaborative project and this volume, I would now
like to turn to a more individual perspective on one aspect of
these. This perspective has a bearing on discussions in many of
the chapters here and yet is not squarely addressed in them, and it
explains to some degree the interest of British collaborators and
authors here (including mine). This has to do with the different
models of English Studies in different contexts mentioned above.
In my view, it is most appropriate that this volume is published by the Plovdiv University Press because the collaborative
project has its roots in Plovdiv. My first visit to Bulgaria in 2005
was to the Paisii Hilendarski University of Plovdiv, when I first
met colleagues in English Studies from there and other Bulgarian universities, in the context of a quite different project (on
Globalization, Identity Politics, and Social Conflict, see
www.open.ac.uk/arts/gipsc). I became vaguely aware then that
these colleagues were affiliated to Philology Faculties dealing
mainly with Modern Languages, among which English Studies
figured. More precisely, I was aware of and had even passed
through other philology faculties and institutes in continental
Europe before that without giving the matter much thought, but
in Plovdiv it was borne on me that my understanding of English
Studies as a philological discipline was distinctly shaky. My
20
education and professional affiliations in Britain, India and
elsewhere prior to that had been in English Literature departments or sub-departments in Faculties of Arts or Humanities. I
also gradually became aware of, or rather put my mind to, the
fact that the manner in which pedagogic arrangements are made
for English Studies in Philology Faculties is somewhat different
from those I have been accustomed to. These are necessarily
programmes which combine courses in language/linguistics and
literature/culture studies, and serve to develop practical and applied language skills among students (inevitably, given that it is
an ordinarily non-Anglophone context that most students come
from) as well as to cultivate an understanding of Anglophone
linguistics, literatures and cultures. In other words, all students
majoring in English or taking English in a combined programme
have a more holistic exposure to all those strands of English
Studies, which could be expected – consistently with the philological tradition – to inform and enhance each other. As Ann
Hewings’s chapter below observes, English Studies in Britain is
a divided house, and in general these strands are held apart more
emphatically in pedagogic practice, usually in an institutionally
demarcated way. Various combinations and overlaps are available in programme pathways on offer in Britain, but on the presumption of separateness. In fact the juxtapositions of and expectations of mutual interpenetration between these strands that
pertain to English Studies under Philology Faculties is a markedly unfamiliar notion in Britain and even in the United States (I
explain the “even” below) now. One may go through shelves of
critical theory textbooks and disciplinary overviews for English
literature or linguistics or cultural studies produced since the
1970s for the academy in Anglophone centres and rarely encounter the term “philology” (I have looked). I also gathered that
the institutional disposition of English Studies in Philology Faculties is generally consistent with that of other subject areas under their aegis. In fact philological structures and expectations
sit more comfortably there, through well-established practice
and ensconced conceptual precepts, in the study of Slavic languages, Romance languages, and obviously German and Classical languages, than perhaps in English Studies now.
The perception that there is a sort of slip between the institutional arrangements and expectations of Philology Faculties and
21
the specific place of English Studies therein also grew on me
gradually between 2005 and 2007, when the collaborative project
was initiated. It was evident to me that, in terms of their sense of
disciplinary affiliation and belonging, Bulgarian or Romanian
English Studies colleagues spoke the same language as colleagues
in Britain or the United States. Very few of the former appeared to
think of themselves as English philologists in a broad sense, and
preferred to identify their scholarly and pedagogic commitments
distinctly in terms of English Literature and Cultural Studies,
English Language and Linguistics, American Studies, at times
Irish Studies, and (more unfamiliarly from a British point of view)
British Studies. The last is rare in Britain as a clearly demarcated
subject area, but easily anticipated as a natural correlative to approaching English Studies as consisting in a foreign language and
literature (with traditional counterparts in the form of courses on
British civilization or English-speaking civilizations). Besides, I
was aware of the drive by the British Council to institute British
Studies in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990s, and had regarded it (and still do) as an ideologically invidious move on the
Council’s part on grounds which are outside the remit of this paper. That English Studies colleagues in Philology Faculties seem
to habitually present themselves in this fashion is, it seems to me,
not merely a matter of being specific about their teaching and research interests. It is because within the Philology Faculty, the
English Studies area is really disposed in a rather un-philological
fashion – as distinct sub-departments of language and linguistics,
literature, culture studies, American studies etc. which do not
greatly inform each other in pedagogic or scholarly matters. Indeed, I was given to understand that at some Bulgarian and Romanian institutions English Language and Linguistics and English
Literature are seeking distinct and separate institutional status.
The sub-departmental divisions within English Studies under Philology Faculties match largely institutional arrangements for English Studies under Faculties of Arts or Humanities. In practical
terms, English Linguistics speaks as little or as much to English
Literature in Bulgaria as in Britain as far as teachers and researchers go, even though the student experience and institutional arrangements of English Studies in Bulgaria have a more cohesive
appearance than in Britain.
22
In other words, it seemed to me that in Bulgaria and in Romania English Studies is actively and perhaps somewhat uneasily straddling a kind of conflict of Faculties: trying to reconcile a
philological model of the discipline with a humanities/arts
model of the discipline – in other words, trying to reconcile a
cohesive language-literature-culture model with one which tends
to hold linguistics/language, literature and culture studies apart
(or starts by presuming a separation). The situation is further
complicated by the status of English Studies as a foreign language and literature area, and therefore of an overlapping “area
studies” sort of model at play alongside (for the purposes of this
project, particularly associated with post-Second World War
American Studies). From my individual perspective, this negotiation of multiple and apparently contradictory models was of
particular interest in engaging the collaborative project. Admittedly, it is an interest that had derived to some extent from my
own restricted Anglocentric view of English Studies.
The travels of philology in relation to English Studies in Anglophone centres, and its current troubled status and indeed near
invisibility therein, is an interesting issue and could explain a
great deal about the ambiguous place of English Studies in Philology Faculties in Bulgaria and Romania and elsewhere. This introduction is not the place to explore that issue in an extended way,
but a few gestures towards the background and debates at stake
could be useful for approaching the following chapters. In line
with my focus on English Studies here I confine my half-baked
gestures to sources available in the English language, though any
kind of adequate engagement with the matter would call for competence in a large number of other European languages.
The transformation of the classical Roman philologus –
“which lies halfway between scholar and critic and denotes a
man with sufficient learning in language and literature to evaluate and give permanent form to the poetic text” (Fantham 1989:
222) – into the methodical philologist, with a particular scientific and interpretive interest in both classical and modern nationally-defined texts, in 19th century Germany is extensively
charted ground. The ideas of Johann Gottfried Herder, Wilhelm
von Humboldt, and Friedrich Schlegel are central to this area, as
are those, with a hermeneutic turn, of Friedrich Schleiermacher.
23
Mueller-Vollmer usefully describes the transformation they
wrought in bringing modern philology and correlatively a new
hermeneutics into existence as involving two components:
The first concerns the transformation of classical philology
into a cultural science, whose task was defined as the critical
authentication of the extant bodies of texts from Greek and
Roman civilization through a process of reconstitution, classification and interpretation, with the aim of reconstructing in
their entirety the cultures that had produced them. This transformation led to the encyclopaedic systems of the philologists
and historians of the nineteenth century and has shaped the
history of the human sciences until today. The second component is ‘general hermeneutics’, or hermeneutic theory proper
as an independent field of inquiry. It is centred around the notion of understanding. (Mueller-Vollmer 2000: 177)
Formulations by French Enlightenment philosophes and
German idealist philosophers coalesced with a desire to reconstruct national consciousness, and inspired von Humboldt’s conception of a philological educational programme – “a unified
project in language, literature and culture [which] achieved its
most powerful form” in 19th century Europe and which should
be reconsidered seriously in the 21st, according to Hardcastle
(1999: 32). Hardcastle’s is, incidentally, a lucid account of this
complex process and of von Humboldt’s contribution to it. From
the literary critic’s perceptive, Schleiermacher’s work on the
hermeneutic dimension of philology, which seeks to excavate
the linguistic underpinnings of texts as parts of linguistic systems and as individual context-specific constructs is equally
noteworthy (for useful summaries see Mueller-Vollmer 179-82;
and Hamilton 1996: 56-67). The philological project ruled supreme in human studies in Europe through the 19th century and
much of the 20th century, and indeed still has a powerful existence. The first serious challenge to the philological endeavour
to grasp culture by paying close attention to the forms and meanings of language in literature, came after Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics appeared posthumously in
1916. The possibilities of synchronic linguistic analysis were
introduced in the Course not so much by dismissing philology as
by putting it aside: “philological criticism is still deficient on
24
one point: it follows the written language too slavishly and neglects the living language” (Saussure 1959: 1-2). In the latter
half of the 20th century, as literary theory sought to integrate developments from Saussurean linguistics with a more philosophical approach to textual interpretation, and gradually took the institutional form of Theory (with the capital T marking some sort
of institutional autonomy as a subject-area), the hold of the philological model was seriously interrogated.
For English Studies in Anglophone centres the situation apropos the philology model was more complex even in the early
stages of the discipline. As the various accounts of the history of
English Studies in different continental European countries in
Engler and Haas’s edited volume The European History of English Studies (2000) show, the development of a philological
structure for Anglistik from Germany had a particularly strong
and lasting influence. In Britain it was relatively modestly felt.
Though philological ideas “entered English educational thinking
through the works of Coleridge, Carlyle, Arnold, Huxley, Mill
amongst many other writers and thinkers” (Hardcastle 1999: 42),
their impact on the development of the academic discipline of
English was modest. Nineteenth century scholarship in Britain
on English language, history and literature do show a powerful
subscription to the philological method, but institutionally there
were stronger Evangelical and Utilitarian and particularly imperial ideologies at work which gave the academic discipline a different character – especially in making English Literature
(which became predominantly the discipline of English in Britain and the colonies) the conduit of “social missions.” Institutional developments along these lines have been extensively examined for England (e.g. Palmer 1965, Baldick 1983, Doyle
1989, Dixon 1991), Scotland (e.g. Crawford 1992), colonies like
India and South Africa (e.g. Vishwanathan 1989, Johnson 1996).
Perhaps a narrower focus on class divisions and broader view of
imperial domains intersected on English Studies in Britain to
contain its nationalist spirit – to some degree at odds with the
practice of philology, and despite philology’s universalising philosophical underpinnings. In the early half of the 20th century the
distinctive British model of English as an academic discipline
was institutionally firmed up. By the end of the 20th century an
25
anti-philological drive from the United States simply confirmed
that aspect of the discipline in Britain, and elsewhere where the
British model was accommodated, despite sea changes at the
instance of influences from the United States in other aspects of
English Studies (especially in incorporating Theory and then
identity politics).
If in Britain the institutional inculcation of philology in English Studies has had a low-key presence, in the United States the
case was the opposite. Historians of the discipline there (e.g.
Graff 1987, Scholes 1998) chart a trajectory that embraced the
philological model at an institutional level while making concessions to both home-grown and British departures. Scholars
revered as institutional icons in the United States were thought
of as philologists, such as Albert Cook, Edwin Greenshaw, Leo
Spitzer, Erich Auerbach. As it happened, the drama of rejecting
the philological model and actively forgetting (almost an oxymoron) it with the broad realm of English Studies in view – and
also with Comparative Literature within focus – was overtly
played out in the United States. A key moment in the drama was
highlighted by René Wellek’s 1963 article “American Literary
Scholarship.” This noted that, “In 1900 a type of philological
scholarship imported from Germany had triumphed in American
graduate schools and in the production of American literary
scholars” (Wellek 1963: 296); gave reasons for that triumph;
went on to observe that:
By the mid-century, philological scholarship, though still entrenched in most graduate schools, was definitely on the defensive; its exclusive rule of the American universities was
broken; and everywhere, especially among the younger men
of the staff and the students, dissatisfaction with the system
became so widespread that it seemed merely a matter of time
when it could be seen as a historical phenomenon of American cultural history (298);
and then delivered a burst of invective against such scholarship
on Wellek’s own account:
The useless antiquarianism, the dreary factualism, the
pseudo-science combined with anarchical scepticism and a
lack of critical taste characteristic of this scholarship must be
26
apparent to all today. The system has become almost too
easy a target for ridicule. (299)
He concluded by marking other distinctive approaches to literary studies that have emerged in the United States (New Humanist, Marxist, New Critical), and charting some of the reasons
for American disaffection with philology (its affiliation with nationalism and ethnic particularities, America’s distance from
Europe, and the remoteness from antiquity there). Wellek captured a political mood which was in fact felt widely in Europe
too, and certainly taken to heart in the United States. A scathing
radical critique of the place of Oratory and Rhetoric in English
Studies, aligned with the philological model, in a politically conservative American academy by Richard Ohmann (1976) followed a decade later. The rise of theory mentioned above, and its
institutional entrenchment as Theory, soon moved from linguistic
and philosophical abstraction towards embracing a range of New
Left political agendas (which Edward Said [1983] thought of as
the “worldly” concerns of theory), especially along the lines of
difference and postcoloniality and marginal identities (in terms of
gender, race, sexuality, immigration). These ideological turns
seemed antithetical to the nationalist and yet universalist, backward-looking associations of philology. By 1988, addressing a
conference on “What is Philology?” at Harvard University,
Wendell Clausen prefaced his call for a reconsideration of philological ideals with the words: “Anyone who speaks of philology
today must be aware that it has become, for many, a pejorative
term, even a term of abuse” (Clausen 1990: 13).
And yet, those associations made with philology and so descried did not register the grand ambition of a unified project of
language, literature and culture and nor did they do justice to the
humanistic idealism that its proponents often and explicitly espoused. In a curious way, the drive of Theory and politics in
English Studies in Anglophone centres – indeed in linguistic,
literary and cultural studies more broadly – actually itself led to
interdisciplinary interfaces between languages, literatures and
cultures, with political and philosophical idealism implicit,
which became institutionally respectable in the course of the
1980s and 1990s. That these moves resonated in various ways
with the project of philology should have been self-evident –
27
and probably were, but weren’t announced in so many words.
Possibly a kind of shrill political correctness which makes mantras of normatively loaded words made it prudent not to call this
a reiteration or reinvention of the philological project with expanded boundaries. Only very few distinctly muted attempts in
that direction were made in the United States, usually by resorting to a sort of dumbing down of philology, by seeing it as less
than what it was, or conceiving it more modestly than seems
plausible. Most influential in this direction was Paul de Man’s
1982 essay “The Return to Philology,” which looked back nostalgically to philological approaches taken in university courses
in the 1950s at Harvard to observe:
Mere reading, it turns out, prior to any theory, is able to
transform critical discourses in a manner that would appear
deeply subversive to those who think of the teaching of literature as a substitute for the teaching of ethics, psychology,
or intellectual history. Close reading accomplishes this often
in spite of itself because it cannot fail to respond to structures of language which it is the more or less secret aim of
teaching to keep hidden.
Attention to the philological or rhetorical devices of language is not the same as aesthetic appreciation, although the
latter can be a way of access to the former. (Man 1986: 24)
Perhaps it was de Man’s continental European background
which was making a return here, but as iconised a Theorist in the
United States, as institutionally and academically valorised,
could scarcely be disregarded. It is noteworthy though that de
Man’s sense of philology here seems a distinctly modest one: a
matter of close reading for the purposes of teaching. It was so
modest that it could be noted without considering its implications too deeply. But still it was de Man speaking, which was a
big deal in the United States at the time. The Harvard conference
on philology in 1988 referred above, where Clausen spoke, was
organised by Jan Ziolkowski, who went on to edit the proceedings. In an engagingly forthright introduction there (Ziolkowski
1990), he recalled the difficulty he had in getting prominent
scholars to participate in a conference on philology, and how
useful it was to draw their attention to de Man’s essay to secure
28
their agreement. Perhaps it was out of regard for de Man that on
the whole the proceedings had an upbeat tone about philology.
But it made little difference, and philology stayed out of the vocabulary of Theory and of English Studies in Anglophone centres. It makes timid and unobtrusive appearances once in a
while, such as in Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht’s work on textual
scholarship, where philology is cautiously removed from any
contentious ambit into a narrowly applied one as “a configuration of scholarly skills that are geared toward historical text curatorship” (Gumbrecht 2003: 2).
In continental Europe the philological model remained firmly
entrenched for the study of modern languages, including by and
large for English Studies. But particularly in English Studies this
was a difficult negotiation. The postures against philology that
had been struck in Anglophone centres of the discipline, particularly in the dominant United States, could hardly be disregarded:
neither as a matter of academic interest nor as a matter of institutional prerogatives was that possible. What came to obtain was
and is precisely the kind of in-between state of affairs, the straddling between two disparate models, with which I began these
reflections. The adjustments that followed in the peculiar space of
English Studies in Western Europe in the 1980s, so that the British/American models of the discipline could sidle in with the prevailing philological model, were naturally received with unease.
Indicative here is a tirade against such adjustments, published in
the form of an essay entitled “English as a Foreign Literature and
the Decline of Philology” by T. A. Birrell in 1989. Drawing upon
his experience of teaching English literature in Nijmegen University, Birrell here “protests” against the gradual demise of
an assumption, an ethos, and an ideal, that can be expressed
in the term ‘Philology’, or rather ‘Philologie’ ... what ‘humanism’ had originally meant for Latin and Greek, ‘philology’ now meant for the whole family of languages – a
scholarly reverence for language, and for its expression in
literature (Birrell 1989: 581-82).
He effectively protests against the consequent separation of English language and literature through curricular reform, so that
language teaching acquires a more independent and applied
edge. It seems to me that in continental European English Stud29
ies particularly the uneasy negotiation between two models,
which Birrell touched the pulse of, still continues. It appears as a
backdrop of particular interest when we turn to the condition of
English Studies in East and Central European countries such as
Bulgaria and Romania.
Negotiations between the two models of English Studies is
of particular interest in contexts like Bulgaria and Romania because of some of the shared and differentiated experiences noted
earlier amidst which the discipline has been constructed and pursued. In some of the following chapters much is said, for instance, about the importance of the history of communism, postcommunism, transition toward European integration for developments in English Studies. Behind those observations there remain some interesting questions which are yet to be reckoned
with, which indeed some of these chapters begin to reckon with.
Questions such as: How did the philological model for the study
of modern languages negotiate with an ideologically led agenda
in the communist period? Why did it persist or how did it accommodate itself with the exigencies of communist academic
policy? What freedoms and restrictions did its persistence enable? How particularly did that work for English Studies? To
what extent were the ideological proclivities of dominant Anglophone centres accommodated in the discipline in postcommunist and transitional dispensations? How forcefully and
to what effect has that worked?
It seems to me that the answers to such questions begin to
surface in the chapters that follow, and no doubt will be productively engaged through further projects and discussions. These
questions undoubtedly simmer near the surface of most of the
following chapters. And they are of the greatest interest wherever English Studies in engaged, perhaps particularly from the
somewhat blinkered Anglocentric disciplinary perspective that
prevails in Britain and the United States. The issue of the two
models is but one area in which fruitful further discussions can
be expected. Certainly the following chapters give evidence of
numerous other issues to do with English Studies that have already been more extensively and illuminatingly pondered in
Bulgaria and Romania, with far-reaching potential effects on the
academic discipline in general.
30
On This Side
Milena Katsarska
Between December 2007 and May 2008, within the initial phase
of the collaborative project which the present volume arises
from, a comprehensive student survey was conducted in Bulgaria. This survey aimed at tapping into English Studies students’ perceptions about the tertiary level programmes that they
are involved in, and prompted students to indicate what subject
area they felt they were currently studying. Faced with a blank
box on the survey form, some of them wrote “English,” others
“English Studies,” others still “English and American Studies.”
Some of those involved in joint subjects stated “English and
(another language).” Quite a few responses both in single and
joint subjects did use the “Ph”-word. In fact, a closer look at the
202 respondents from Plovdiv University reveals that 130 of
them, coming from a range of programme backgrounds, have
variously spelled out “Philology” – more so the first and second
year students than students in the later years of their study. Interestingly, a group of fourth year students who chanced upon
what their juniors had written could not refrain from remarking
on this “oddity” as, in their words, they were aware that such a
concept “did not exist” in English-speaking worlds or, at the
very least, would scarcely mean anything without a footnote. We
could of course attribute the change from early to later years of
study as a matter of changing perceptions of translation. In other
words, possibly students in the early years tended to translate the
Bulgarian илология literally and faithfully into philology,
while those in later years went for English Studies as an idiomatizing and free translation, in Peter Newmark’s (1981) terms, as
a matter of language “simply” equivalence between the source
and target texts. Alternatively, in all awareness that hardly anything in translation is language “simply,” we could try to imagine the “footnote” that those students considered necessary as
one that clarifies the complex and slippery relation between
English Philology and English Studies as programme labels, informed by the dynamics of disciplinary constructions and institutional spaces.
31
The first task of this section of the introduction is that: to
give an imaginary “footnote” on what the previous section suggestively identifies as a “kind of conflict of Faculties” from an
Anglophone perspective. In fact the previous section could be
regarded as such a “footnote”, and here I begin by extending that
“footnote” with a few further observations drawn from the perspective of my professional experiences – which, unlike my coeditor’s, have not been confined to academies of Anglophone
contexts. The second task of this section is to unpack the rationale behind this volume entitled English Studies on This Side:
Post-2007 Reckonings, and highlight the dialogic links between
its constitutive parts and the diverse voices which speak in it. In
the following my position is informed by my involvement in the
collaborative project this volume arises from, first as a research
team member and then as coordinator for Bulgaria in it. More
importantly, what I have to say draws on my personal professional experience as a graduate from the Sofia University English Studies programme in 1994 and subsequently as a lecturer
and scholar in American Studies at the Plovdiv University English Department since 1995. It is especially with the latter in
view that I would like to offer some, often speculative, observations on what it means to be positioned within a philological
space while doing English Studies in Bulgaria at present.
Indeed, the Bulgarian model for English Studies in higher
education has been shaped since its inception along the lines of
the German model of philology. In pragmatic terms this means
that English Studies programmes are traditionally programmes
which combine courses in language/linguistics and literature/culture studies. Additionally, they serve to develop practical
and applied language skills among students (by curricular provisions which allocate about 1/3 of classroom contact hours to
language practice) while cultivating an understanding of Anglophone linguistics, literatures and cultures that rely on and extend
each other. In other words, in tune with the philological tradition, students majoring in English or taking English in a joint
subject have a more holistic exposure to all those strands of English Studies than in Anglophone contexts, where language/linguistics and literature tend to be pursued (in pedagogic
and scholarly terms) separately. To attempt to comprehensively
32
conceptualise the implications of a currently functioning philological model in relation to English Studies as a (provisionally
singular) discipline with a global spread and practice is rather
utopian. But it is certainly an enterprise worthy of extensive exploration, bearing in mind that traditional models maintain a
strong hold in a number of contexts.
One immediate observation along such lines comes to mind
with regard to the interrelatedness of the “philological project”
(from its roots in German idealist philosophy to its methodological heights in the 19th century and influence in the better part of
the 20th) with national consciousness, which has been interrogated not only by the advent of Theory but also by present day
fluidities of identities, communications and movements. From a
contemporary point of view, it seems implausibly reductive and
critically problematic to anchor English Studies to “territorialities” demarcated within, for example, nation-states and to
thereby focus on “national language/literature/cultures.” However, English Studies BA degrees in a philological vein by and
large structure disciplinary knowledge in courses from such a
rationale. Further, to the extent that English Studies in Anglophone centres have been informed by a philological model
(more so for the USA, see Graff 1987) there have been significant departures from that model: institutional developments
there have inserted divides between linguistics, literature and
area studies, and have been complicated by the specificities of
Anglophone contexts. The influence of these Anglophone centres, however, can hardly be disregarded in Bulgaria or elsewhere when it comes to English Studies. Thus, the philologically
organised department and degree subject in English Studies
(necessarily English and American studies these days) in Bulgaria operates in the tension zones of centrifugal and centripetal
forces of disciplinary developments and disciplinary knowledge
organisation. Taken to the “basic” level of practical considerations: contemplating what, for instance, a four-year BA curriculum in English Studies should contain as a “disciplinary core” in
a foreign language (a shrinking space for containing disciplinary
knowledge) versus an ever expanding academic field (or shall
we say fields?) does indeed evoke a sense of crisis. Negotiations
on the BA level through a model of the discipline that seems
33
resistant to a number of developments (both related to understandings of disciplinarity and realities of today) and current
practices push in a variety of directions: from departmental debates about an imminent split between literature and linguistics,
to relegation of responsibility to students (who on an elective
basis can choose to take courses in a variety of areas and combinations within the same programme), to setting up BA degree
programmes within the paradigm of Applied Linguistics (usually
combined as English and another language). In other words,
both the “contemporary pull” and “the expanding curriculum”
that the “discipline” of English Studies experiences today primarily occupy the elective margins, rather than the core, of a BA
degree in the subject in Bulgaria. Also, the latter development I
mentioned – that of setting up English Studies programmes
along an Applied Linguistics paradigm – is fairly recent and is
seemingly not given the weight accorded to a model of long
standing or the nostalgic aspiration to be a “roundedphilologist.” Instead such programmes, which are structured either with a translation or education orientation, capitalise on
such selling-points as: (a) drawing on explicitly contextuallyspecific and practice-oriented developments in linguistics; (b)
being conceived of as a foundational degree in explicitly professional and job-market terms; (c) being in tune with EU-wide
processes and policies (the Bologna Process, multilingualism and
plurilingualism, etc). This in turn begs the question of where and
how philology degrees, and perhaps the entailing philological
model, could be positioned on the map of disciplines and subject
areas – especially in view of our case in point, English Studies.
Deeper questions lurk behind that: how could a holistic language,
literature and culture approach function given a “deterritorialized”
(from national anchors) subject matter in English Studies? What
is the philological model’s relation to the prevailing political
economy, since it requires a considerable long term investment?
What is the implicit and potential politics of philology?
The answers to these are yet to be mooted and debated but
the collaborative project on English Studies in Bulgaria and
Romania, from which this volume arises, has provided the environment to begin identifying relevant issues and discussing them
across institutional spaces. The above-mentioned institutional
34
and curricular considerations are indicative of tensions at a number of levels that are pertinent generally to European, ordinarily
non-Anglophone, philologically-structured contexts of English
Studies, as they are specifically to the two contexts in question
here – Romanian and Bulgarian higher education. I would like to
think of these as productive tensions for they have stimulated
scholars from a range of professional contexts to contribute to
English Studies on This Side: Post-2007 Reckonings.
As the previous section of this book’s introduction indicates,
the subsequent chapters are informed by discussions that took
place during and around a workshop held in Plovdiv in October
2008. In many ways the discursive workshop structure has been
carried into the present volume, and the workshop exchanges are
reflected in the dialogic links between the chapters and parts.
These chapters are arranged under four broad parts. Each part
brings together chapters which have a coherent emphasis, and it
therefore makes sense to present them together. And yet all the
parts – and therefore the chapters within them – are also related
to the others. They are all concerned with disciplinary constructions and practices in relation to English Studies.
The opening part, “Canon, Curriculum and Change,” initiates a complex mapping of the territory that this volume covers.
Positioned within different professional contexts, the contributors here variously elucidate the links between processes of
canon formation and their relationship to the pedagogical spaces
of English Studies. The chapters examine the relationship between canon formation and the production of academic curricula
in English Studies against a broad socio-cultural background.
The background comprises factors such as Bulgarian, Romanian
and UK constructions of Anglophone cultures and identities,
interpretive and evaluative responses to Anglophone texts and
discourses, as well as language politics given the global spread
of English. The thread that runs explicitly or tacitly throughout
this part has to do with “change”: change in terms of institutional and disciplinary developments in English Studies and in
relation to shifting ideological dispensations. In this regard W.
R. Owens’s question, “What, then, should the relationship between the ‘canon’ and the ‘curriculum’ be?” – posed towards the
end of his detailed account of the relation between canon and
35
curriculum – is worth recalling. And his subsequent answer is
suggestive of where the critical potential to seek change in this
respect might be located: “It seems to me that it would be helpful to keep the two concepts separate as much as possible, and to
recognise that a curriculum is – and should be – much more
open to change than a canon.”
Mihaela Irimia’s chapter surveys the historical development
of English Studies in Romania not so much in terms of institutionalization (e.g. following a chronology of subject, degree and
department foundations) as through mapping a complex web of
influences. This web of influences accounts for Romanian cultural identity construction and the role played therein by conceptions of “Anglophoneness” and Englishness – in the cultural
sphere generally and in the institutional spaces of English Studies particularly. In an imagological vein, Irimia places the idea
of Anglophoneness in Romania as deriving from a range of extrinsic influences which gradually become interiorized. The
chapter charts paths of continuities as well as ruptures in the
process of the institutionalization and consolidation of English
Studies in Romania. Keeping Irimia’s observations alongside
Gavriliu, Hulban and Popa’s “The History of English Studies in
Romania” (in Engler and Haas eds. 2000), and comparing these
Romanian accounts with similar Bulgarian accounts such as
Shurbanov and Stamenov’s “English Studies in Bulgaria” (also
in Engler and Haas eds. 2000) and indeed some contributions in
this volume, calls into question some of the preconceptions that
ostensibly underpin this volume itself and the project it arises
from. Such a comparison, in my view, gestures toward a need to
interrogate any easy “lumping together” of Romania and Bulgaria as being similarly placed in relation to English Studies by
virtue of being non-Anglophone, European, post-communist,
recently acceded, etc. On a related note, Ludmilla Kostova’s
chapter usefully takes a distinctive approach to the history of
English Studies in Bulgaria. Here the concept of the literary
canon is approached from the perspective of literary historiography, which necessarily partakes in pedagogical and larger cultural processes. Literary historiography is conceived as a driving
force in the canon formation of a foreign literature and as implicated in identity construction and identity politics. Kostova fo36
cuses on a specific case study: the two-volume History of English Literature by the Bulgarian scholar Marco Mincoff, which
has played a key role in the development of English Studies in
Bulgaria. In Kostova’s words the critical analysis positions the
“histories of foreign literatures within the broad context of crosscultural literary reception,” with a view to “examining the ways
in which literary canons are formed in “non-native” cultural
communities and singling out a major line of development in the
reception of English-language literatures in the Bulgarian context.” This chapter not only poses questions about the manner in
which scholarly influence works within English Studies in Bulgaria, but also raises questions about the politics of identity construction in Bulgaria – of essentialist “Bulgarianness” vis-à-vis
the essentialised English “Other” – during and since the period
of state national communism. Yordan Kosturkov and Lubomir
Terziev then respond in briefer chapters to some of the issues
raised in this part already. They ponder the intersections between canon and curriculum with their personal professional
experience in view.
The chapters which conclude the first part take the discussion of curriculum and change to the area of language and linguistics. On the one hand, Ann Hewings addresses the question
“English Studies – One Discipline or Many?” and unpacks the
plurality of understandings, constructions and academic practices that define disciplinarity. On the other, Joan Swann’s
“Global Englishes” brings to the fore the political implications
of changing linguistic “cartography” in documenting and understanding the position of English as a global language. Here three
approaches for coming to grips with the global spread of the
language are discussed: linguistic imperialism, World Englishes,
and English as a lingua franca. It is evident that these have a
bearing on both English as a language of education and English
as a subject of study, insofar as these are pursued in Bulgaria
and Romania and as indeed in other ordinarily non-Anglophone
contexts.
The second part, “Pedagogy, Practice and Policy,” focuses
on practices in teaching and learning and their relationship to the
broader social and cultural environment. This begins by continuing with the focus on language and linguistics on which the pre37
vious part ended. Alexandra Bagasheva’s and Boryana
Bratanova’s chapters steer the discussion of English Studies towards specific cases of courses and classroom arrangements for
teaching linguistics, against background shifts in dominant theoretical and pedagogic models and practices. While Bratanova
addresses the critical implications of changing a core textbook in
English grammar, Bagasheva details changes in the curriculum
design and presentation of a foundational course in General Linguistics for undergraduates. The latter chapter draws a complex
picture which moves between macro and the micro level concerns, and effectively conveys the negotiations that occur at the
interface of current developments in linguistic theory and the
pragmatics of linguistics pedagogy. The underlying ideological
implications for the learning environment are also teased out,
especially in charting the “classroom” as an intellectual space
which both transmits and spatially constructs the discipline.
Petya Tsoneva’s and Pavel Petkov’s chapters thereafter move
the emphasis to pedagogy in literature and culture studies by
analysing an MA programme in British Studies set up at the
University of Veliko Turnovo in the transitioning 1990s with the
support of the British Council. These offer a critical account of
the programme, examine the methodology that was adopted and
the outputs that resulted, and express unease about the manner in
which the balance of literature and cultural studies was negotiated. The role of the British Council is raised in these, albeit in
an indirect fashion: to my mind, that is a matter of particular
scholarly interest which is yet to be adequately addressed. The
manner in which Anglocentric bodies, such as the British Council, have attempted to mould English Studies in Bulgaria and
Romania and indeed internationally deserves closer critical attention.
Further, this part of the volume touches upon some political
factors and policy-making initiatives that impinge upon the
pedagogical spaces of English Studies prior to and after EU accession in 2007. With regard to the specific pedagogic practice
of note making, Ana-Karina Schneider argues that shifts in ability and attitudes in the Romanian university context are bringing
about “a new definition of English studies that hinges on the
EU-regulated imperative that all language departments produce
38
active, marketable language skills.” She goes on to illustrate
how the shifts in question and their effects are leading toward a
redefinition of literacy. The pressures put on pedagogic practice
by transnational and national policy initiatives, and the contradictions which consequently arise, are the themes of both Madeleine Danova’s and Silvia Florea’s chapters. Both focus in different ways on the effects of policies which seek to widen the
reach of education at national levels in response to EU initiatives. Both pay particular attention to the effects of these on the
broad area of English Studies. Danova examines closely the
background to the setting up of retraining programmes in Sofia
University, which are designed to turn school teachers from
various backgrounds into English teachers within brief and intensively-structured periods. Florea details policy initiatives in
Romania to increase access to higher education, examines their
modes of implementation, and assesses the results with English
Studies as the arena in view. Various kinds of miscalculations
and inadequacies are found in both the conceptualisation of the
policies and in their implementation. One of her significant findings is that access may have “widened” numerically but has not
“broadened” in the sense of extending evenly to different constituencies. Danova’s and Florea’s chapters highlight not only
the contextual nuances of both countries as recently acceded EU
members but also position English Studies in direct relation to
employment, society and government policies.
The third part, “Collaborations and Circulations,” turns to
institutional collaborations and the circulations of ideas – in
other words, the scholarly and academic exchanges which have
impacted on the development of English Studies. This part
brings together personal recollections and retrospective reflections on such exchanges in Bulgaria. Irimia’s and Kostova’s
chapters in part one, I have noted, illuminate how a complex
network of influences in and after the period of national state
communism defined English Studies. The contributions in this
part by Alexander Shurbanov, Michael Holman, and Simon Edwards discussing international institutional collaborations and
exchanges throw light on the same area, but from a quite different direction. The collaborations and exchanges in question were
between Sofia University and the Universities of Leeds and
39
Roehampton in the UK and SUNY Albany in the USA. These
chapters not only complicate widely held notions of rigid ideological (and consequently academic) isolation between the “two
camps” on either side of the “iron curtain,” they also clarify the
personal investments that went into institutional links in terms of
agents, benefactors and beneficiaries. These reminiscences present academic links that were formalized to varying degrees as
enabling a mutually informative and rewarding environment for
English Studies. Mutuality, of course, lies behind institutions
which formalise academic and educational collaborations at the
government level too, such as the Bulgarian American Commission for Educational Exchange Fulbright. The investment of the
latter in the development of English and American Studies in
Bulgaria is outlined by its executive director Julia Stefanova in
the last chapter of the third part.
Comparative approaches inform a number of contributions
to this volume, but it is in the fourth part, “The Comparative
Perspective,” that this is considered in a sustained fashion. Here
academic spaces that do not fall, strictly speaking, within the
institutionally demarcated territories of English departments or
degrees and which nevertheless are relevant to the discipline are
taken up. The chapters in this section discuss a potentially rich
and yet relatively neglected area of cross-fertilization at the interface of English Studies and Comparative Literature Studies.
In Bulgaria the latter are institutionally located within degrees in
Bulgarian and Slavic philology as well as in Screen and Stage
Arts. Thus Cleo Protohristova discusses the inception and conceptualization of foundational university courses in Western
European Literatures in Bulgaria, and places the origins of the
study of English literature there in historical terms. Effectively,
she sees the emergence of English Studies within the philological project with which I began this section, and which is so
widely prevalent in continental Europe. Chapters by Ognyan
Kovachev and Vitana Kostadinova engage with specific issues
at the intersections of Comparative Literature and English Studies, namely, with receptive fields and the framing (or positioning) of genres and periods. They focus respectively on the
Gothic and on Romanticism in the Bulgarian scholarly and academic milieu under different historical and ideological dispensa40
tions. Coming from the institutional context of Stage and Screen
Arts, Iskra Nikolova’s chapter opens this volume to a revealing
discussion of “reception in performance,” with particular attention to stage adaptations and performances inspired by English
literary texts in Bulgaria.
The above summary of the contents of the present volume is
indicative of the range of issues that are covered. Various senses
of occupying a location and being located underpin all the efforts here: within institutional spaces; with regard to disciplinary
areas; in regional and national and continental and international
grids; in terms of geopolitical demarcations (such as East and
West); along the lines of phases and periods (such as pre- and
post-1989); with regard to perceived cultural territories (such as
Anglophone and non-Anglophone). And yet, none of these diverse ways of conceiving location and speaking from a location
close the deliberations in this volume into rigid cells. On the
contrary, every space of location flows into other spaces and
every notion of location overlaps with other notions in each of
these chapters, and across the chapters, and across the parts.
There is an underlying sense of location, it seems to me, which
holds this volume together; and yet, to try to articulate that sense
of location in a definite way would undermine the enormous
sense of fluidity and openness with which it is expressed here.
That’s why the editors of this volume have chosen the indicative
and yet undefined phrase “on this side” to try to convey the location of this volume as a whole. Taken together, the located
points of view extended from the specific theoretical, professional, institutional, historical, geopolitical, and other contexts
on this side are suggestive of the critical potential entailed in
reckoning with English Studies as a global discipline.
Works Cited
Baldick, Chris. The Social Mission of English Criticism, 18481932. Oxford: Clarendon, 1983.
Birrell, T.A. “English as a Foreign Literature and the Decline of
Philology.” English Studies 70:6, 1989. 581-86.
Clausen, Wendell. “Philology.” In Ziolkowski ed., 1990. 13-15.
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Crawford, Robert. Devolving English Literature. Oxford: Clarendon, 1992.
Dixon, John. A Schooling in ‘English’. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1991.
Doyle, Brian. English and Englishness. London: Routledge,
1989.
Engler, Balz and Renate Haas eds.. European English Studies:
Contributions Towards the History of a Discipline. Leicester: The English Association for ESSE, 2000.
Fantham, Elaine. “The Growth of Literature and Criticism at
Rome.” In George A. Kennedy ed. The Cambridge History
of Literary Criticism, Vol.1: Classical Criticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 220-44.
Gavriliu, Eugenia, Horia Hulban and Ecaterina Popa. “The History of English Studies in Romania.” In Engler and Haas
eds. 2000. 231-265.
Graff, Gerald. Professing Literature: An Institutional History.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Gumbrecht, Hans. The Powers of Philology: Dynamics of Textual Scholarship. Champaign IL: University of Illinois
Press, 2003.
Hamilton, Paul. Historicism. London: Routledge, 1996.
Hardcastle, John. “Von Humboldt’s Children: English and the
Formation of a European Educational Ideal.” Changing English 6:1, 1999. 31-45.
Johnson, David. Shakespeare and South Africa. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.
Man, Paul de. “The Return to Philology.” The Resistance to
Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986. 2126. [First published in TLS 10 December 1982.]
Mueller-Vollmer, Kurt. “Language Theory and the Art of Understanding.” In Marshall Brown ed. The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Vol.5: Romanticism. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000. 162-84.
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Ohmann, Richard. English in America: A Radical View of the
Profession. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.
Palmer, D.J. The Rise of English Studies. London: Oxford University Press, 1965.
Said, Edward. The World, the Text, and the Critic. London: Vintage, 1983.
Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. Trans.
Wade Baskin. London: Peter Owen, 1959.
Scholes, Robert. The Rise and Fall of English: Reconstructing
English as a Discipline. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1988.
Shurbanov, Alexander and Christo Stamenov. “English Studies
in Bulgaria.” In Engler and Haas eds. 2000. 267-292.
Vishwanathan, Gauri. Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and
British Rule in India. London: Faber and Faber, 1989.
Wellek, René. “American Literary Scholarship.” Concepts of
Criticism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963. 296315.
Ziolkowski, Jan. “What is Philology: Introduction.” In Ziolkowski ed., 1990. 1-12.
Ziolkowski, Jan ed. On Philology. University Park PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990.
43
Part I
Canon, Curriculum and Change
1
The Canon and the Curriculum
W. R. Owens
The issue of the “literary canon” has been a fiercely contested
one over the past twenty years or so, and indeed debates about
the canon have entered into the wider public discussion of literary matters in a way that few other debates among academics in
the humanities have done. By the term “literary canon” is meant
those works of literature regarded as possessing especial authority or literary merit, those that form the pantheon of “great
works” from the past. The analogy is with scriptural canons,
such as the collection of twenty-four books in three sections
making up the Jewish religious canon as fixed in the second century BCE, or the collection of twenty-seven books making up
the New Testament canon as fixed by the fourth century CE by
the early Church Fathers. This analogy does not really hold,
however, and part of me always wants to argue that the term
“canon” is not an appropriate one to use about secular literature.
The whole point of a scriptural canon is that, albeit after much
controversy and debate, it is eventually fixed and closed and authoritative. We don’t get books being added or taken away from
the Bible every few years. By contrast, new secular literary
works keep being published and some of these may have claims
to “canonicity”, and be added to the canon, while some already
in the canon may come to be questioned, and may eventually be
dropped.
However, despite the objections I may have to it, I can’t
deny that the term has been around for a very long time, and is
probably here to stay. The construction of the literary canon has
been studied in a number of valuable books in recent years,
among them John Guillory’s challenging Cultural Capital: The
Problem of Literary Canon Formation (1993), and Trevor
Ross’s wide ranging The Making of the English Literary Canon:
From the Middle Ages to the Late Eighteenth Century (1998).
47
According to Jan Gorak, in his earlier, but still useful book The
Making of the Modern Canon (1991), the modern idea of a literary canon, in the sense of a list of secular texts required to be
studied, first emerged in the middle of the eighteenth century.
He quotes the German classical scholar David Ruhnken, who in
1768 described the way the ancient Greek teachers of oratory
transmitted their knowledge to their students: “From the great
abundance of orators ... they drew up into a canon at least ten
they thought most important” (Gorak 1991: 51). These ten chosen orators became “canonical” for students of rhetoric, and in
due course other lists were drawn up, setting out the canon of
epic poetry, lyric poetry, and so on. Scholars have argued that
the work of these Alexandrian canon-makers was crucial in ensuring the survival of many ancient texts, and Gorak suggests
that the Victorian revival of the teaching of the classics performed a similar role, creating a canon of classical authors for
study by generations of students. The process of literary canon
formation seems to be bound up with the construction of curricula, and certainly the education system at all levels is a powerful
means of institutionalising the official canon.
We’ll come on to look in more detail at the relationship of
the canon and the curriculum, but before we do we might note in
passing that it is important to recognise that the “official” canon
is by no means the only one. As Alastair Fowler has reminded
us, individuals have personal canons, collections of works that
they have read and that they value for personal reasons (Fowler
1979: 97–119). He notes, too, that the canon is, effectively, restricted to what may be termed the accessible canon, those
works that are kept in print, or are readily available in libraries.
Within the “official” canon there are further selective canons,
and critical canons, works valued by particular critics or readers.
So, for example, Harold Bloom, in his book The Western Canon
(1994) sets out a list of 3,000 books or authors that he regards as
making up the Western literary canon, from which he chooses
twenty-six books or authors, with Shakespeare at the centre, for
discussion.
It is also worth stressing the fact that the formation of canons
of national literatures has by no means been the sole prerogative
of the educational system, and that wider social, cultural, and
48
even technological and economic forces have been equally, if
not more important. I’m thinking here of William St Clair’s
book, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (2004), where
he shows in enormous and compelling detail how the removal of
perpetual copyright in a historic House of Lords ruling in 1774
led to an explosion of publication of cheap books and a great
expansion of the reading public. St Clair argues that before 1774
the “canon” of English poetry, meaning by this the works of poets regularly re-issued by monopoly publishers and thus made
available to the small number of rich readers who could afford to
buy them, was a very limited one indeed. Chaucer, Spenser,
Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Prior, Thomson, Young and
one or two others were re-issued, but the vast majority of older
poets were never reprinted and were pretty much inaccessible to
readers. Following the opening up of the market after 1774, publishers rushed to offer what was quite specifically marketed as a
formal “canon” of English poetry, issued in uniform series, with
titles like The British Poets (43 volumes), The Poets of Great
Britain (109 volumes), The Works of the English Poets (75 volumes). The same thing happened with novels and plays, and
these series were printed and reprinted on a vast scale. This “old
canon” of English literature, as St Clair describes it, lasted from
the 1780s through to the 1870s.
Another development from outside the academy that bears
on the concept and construction of the English literary canon is
the advice given to readers by critics, reviewers and selfappointed pundits of one kind or another. Gorak notes, for example, that hundreds of books were published between the
1880s and 1940s offering readers lists of recommended titles.
The emergence of these lists is no doubt related to the relatively
recent availability of a mass of cheap literature, and to the development of a public library system. New and relatively uneducated readers, it was assumed, needed guidance in what to read.
According to Gorak, the principles governing the selection of
these recommended books seem to have varied enormously, but
behind many of them lurked that idea that some books are
“good” in the sense of being morally uplifting, while others are
“bad” in the sense that they poison the characters of those who
read them. More significant, perhaps, is the distinction he notes
49
between two basic types of list: the representative and the
evaluative. Some lists tried to represent a whole culture, or a
range of diverse cultures. Others were ruthlessly selective, in the
manner of Ezra Pound’s ABC of Reading (1934), which was designed to demonstrate that, in the construction of literary canons,
poets knew best, not critics and certainly not professors (Pound
1961: 40, 45, 83).
We can see, then, that at least before the twentieth century,
“canon” formation was not wholly – indeed was very little – the
prerogative of academics or teachers. When we come to look in
detail at the processes by which certain authors get canonised,
and not others, the picture gets very complicated indeed. It is
well known that it took quite a long time – over a century – for
Shakespeare to achieve his position at the pinnacle of the literary
canon, and that the process was an exceedingly paradoxical and
convoluted one. (For accounts of this process see, in particular,
Taylor 1990 and Dobson 1992.) Having languished unperformed during the middle years of the seventeenth century
when the theatres were closed during and after the English Civil
Wars, some of Shakespeare’s plays returned to the stage following the restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660 and the reopening of the theatres. What is significant, however, is that
these plays were not at first popular with Restoration audiences,
and only became so when substantially rewritten and adapted.
We know from references in his diary that Samuel Pepys was
not at all impressed by performances of Shakespeare plays that
followed the original text, but once they had been adapted and
the language had been made plainer, and they had been provided
with lavish scenic effects, he adored them. He went to see the
version of Macbeth as revised by Sir William Davenant eight
times in less than four years. King Lear only became acceptable
after it had been provided with a new, happy ending by Nahum
Tate in 1681. This adapted version remained the standard acting
text of this most famous play for over a century. Once reestablished on the stage, publication of Shakespeare’s plays became profitable and the great industry of editing his works began. A commemorative statue of the “national bard” was placed
in Westminster Abbey in 1741, and the process of his canonisa50
tion may be said to have culminated in the great Shakespeare
Jubilee of 1769 at Stratford-upon-Avon.
The case of Aphra Behn is a good example of the opposite
trajectory to that of Shakespeare. She was the first English
woman to earn her living as a writer, and was recognised in her
lifetime as one of the most prolific and successful writers of the
age. Her most famous play, The Rover, was performed every
season in London from 1677 to 1743, but then dropped from
sight and was not performed again for over two hundred years.
The reasons why Behn did not make it into the literary canon are
complex, involving in part a wider cultural repudiation of the
“libertine” ethos of Restoration drama, but what is interesting to
consider is how and why, by the end of the twentieth century
Behn was, at last, accepted as a canonical author. (I discuss the
case of Aphra Behn in more detail in Owens and Goodman eds.
1996: 131–75.)
To my mind, one of the most convincing explanations of the
ways in which writers (and artists and musicians) are restored to
the canon and preserved in it is the one put forward by Frank
Kermode in his book Forms of Attention (1985). According to
Kermode, three things are needed: “opinion”, “knowledge” and
“interpretation”. He takes as an example the case of Botticelli,
who had been neglected for centuries. What changed this was
that, at the end of the nineteenth century, a group of artists and
writers who wanted to promote a different view of the early
Renaissance “rediscovered” Botticelli and enthusiastically
championed his work. Their opinion brought him back to notice,
at which point knowledge, in the form of scholarly work by arthistorians, took over. But according to Kermode, this would not
have been enough to keep Botticelli in the canon. What was also
needed was interpretation, the process by which critics offer up
to works of art the homage of fresh commentary – though in the
knowledge that such commentary is bound to be replaced by
further commentary. The canonical work proves that it is canonical precisely because it generates and sustains this neverceasing process of interpretation.
We can see these processes at work in the examples of writers such as John Donne or Aphra Behn, who though famous in
their own time subsequently fell into almost total obscurity. In
51
the case of Donne, “opinion,” in the form of an essay by T. S.
Eliot on “The Metaphysical Poets,” restored him to prominence
at the end of two centuries of neglect. He was “rediscovered”
because Eliot needed an earlier poet to support his own theories
about the development of English poetry, according to which
poets like Donne had possessed “a mechanism of sensibility
which could devour any kind of experience”, a capacity subsequently lost when a “dissociation of sensibility” set in, but which
modern poets, like Eliot, were trying to recreate (Kermode ed.
1975: 59–67). Very soon, “knowledge” about Donne was being
produced by scholars and editors, and the ensuing process of
interpretation of his poetry has given Donne a seemingly unassailable place in the canon of English literature. Much the same
thing happened with Aphra Behn. Her rehabilitation began when
she came to be needed by early feminists like Virginia Woolf
who wanted to uncover a tradition of writing by women. The
opinion of these early feminists led in turn to the production of
scholarly knowledge about Behn, in the form of learned books,
articles and editions. Her works were in consequence revived on
the stage, and are now being vigorously interpreted and reinterpreted, and are widely included in the university curriculum for
English.
This brings me back to the relationship between the canon
and the curriculum. It is important here to remember that there is
a school curriculum as well as a university curriculum. The concept of a canon is still very much alive in the school curriculum
in the UK, though it is by no means a fixed or unchanging
canon. The “National Curriculum” for English in secondary
schools in England (see English 1999, 2009), as laid down by
the government, includes a list of writers designated as “major.”
These writers are all from the past, that is, they are all pretwentieth century. They represent the “the English literary heritage”, and teachers are required to choose the texts they prescribe for study by children from among their works. Shakespeare, needless to say, gets a mention all to himself, though it
would seem that his importance is declining. In the 1999 National Curriculum it was compulsory for children to study two
Shakespeare plays, but by 2009 this had dropped to “at least one
play by Shakespeare.” The list of pre-twentieth century writers
52
prescribed for study also changes over time. The 1999 list included forty-seven writers published before 1914 and deemed to
be canonical. By 2009 we find that the number of canonical
writers has fallen to a mere twenty-six, as follows:
Jane Austen, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, William Blake,
Charlotte Brontë, Robert Burns, Geoffrey Chaucer, Kate
Chopin, John Clare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles
Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Eliot, Thomas Gray,
Thomas Hardy, John Keats, John Masefield, Christina Rossetti, William Shakespeare (sonnets), Mary Shelley, Robert
Louis Stevenson, Jonathan Swift, Alfred Lord Tennyson, H.
G. Wells, Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Wordsworth and William
Wordsworth.
Twenty-five writers have been dropped from the 1999 list. They
are:
Matthew Arnold, Emily Bronte, Robert Browning, John
Bunyan, Lord Byron, Wilkie Collins, Joseph Conrad, Daniel
Defoe, John Donne, John Dryden, Henry Fielding, Elizabeth
Gaskell, George Herbert, Robert Herrick, Gerard Manley
Hopkins, Henry James, Andrew Marvell, John Milton, Alexander Pope, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Edmund Spenser, Anthony Trollope, Henry Vaughan, Sir Thomas Wyatt.
Five writers not on the 1999 list were subsequently added: Kate
Chopin, John Clare, John Masefield, Oscar Wilde and Dorothy
Wordsworth. It is not too difficult to see why these particular writers have now, belatedly, been accorded canonical status.
What all this confirms is that knowledge of a literary canon
is still seen as important in the education of children in the UK,
even though the list of works designated as canonical may
change to reflect changing social concerns. Although the word
“canon” does not appear in the official documents, it is clear that
the works of these writers from the past are being singled out as
representative of the “canon.” Alongside these writers, teachers
also have to include in their teaching of English what are evidently regarded as “non-canonical” writers. These include contemporary writers (a list of about forty names is provided to
choose from), texts from what are described as “different cultures and traditions” (here a list of about twenty writers is pro53
vided to choose from), and a range of non-fictional and nonliterary texts, such as travel writing, reportage, and film. It
seems that there is a “canonical” core of works from the past,
but that the curriculum widens out to include a range of other,
non-canonical – or not-yet-canonical – works.
The same process can be seen in the construction of the curriculum of English Studies in higher education in the UK. Although university departments of literature do not have a “National Curriculum” prescribed by government authority in the
way schools have, they can be seen nevertheless as the transmitters of a canon not very different from the one laid down for
schools by the government. Depending on your point of view,
this can be seen as a good thing, or a bad thing, or simply as an
inescapable fact. Terry Eagleton, in his widely read textbook,
Literary Theory: An Introduction (second edition, 1996), does
not mince his words. University departments of English, he says,
are “part of the ideological apparatus of the modern capitalist
state,” and the literary canon is there to serve the ends of the
state. In his view, teachers of literature, along with critics and
theorists more generally, select certain literary works as ones
which are more amenable than others to the “discourse” of literary criticism, and it is these works, and no others, that form the
agreed “canon.” He represents this process of selection as nothing more or less than an exercise of power: the power of “policing” writing, dividing it into “literary” and “non-literary,” and
the power of certificating those who are judged to be able to participate in the discourse about these canonical works. The
“power” of this literary discourse is itself at the service of what
Eagleton describes as “the ruling power-interests of society at
large, whose ideological needs will be served and whose personnel will be reproduced by the preservation and controlled
extension of the discourse in question” (Eagleton 1996: 174–77).
Eagleton’s view of the matter would seem to leave little or
no space for criticism or alteration of this state of affairs. Despite what he says, however, the dominant ideology does not
seem to have been so completely pervasive as to have stifled all
dissent. The “canon” has in fact been violently attacked from
many quarters. Numerous critics have pointed out that literary
works by women, minority ethnic groups, or working class peo54
ple have been largely unrepresented in a canon dominated by
dead, white, male, Western writers, and have argued strenuously
for the inclusion in the canon of more women writers, black
writers, non-Western writers, and even – though much less frequently – working class writers. These critics of the canon have
had a good deal of success in opening up the curriculum to a
range of hitherto unrepresented and unstudied writers, and to
other forms of writing not traditionally regarded as “literary.”
This has been enriching not only politically but aesthetically as
well. Students at university level, if not in schools, are now
made aware that the literary canon is not something simply there
in nature, but has been constructed and changed over time in a
whole range of complicated ways by different people and institutions all with their own agendas.
It is worth noting, however, that as in schools, so there is a
definite shift in the university curriculum towards the more contemporary, and away from study of works from the past. Concern
about this trend can be discerned in the English Subject Benchmark, a document produced by a group of about a dozen academics from a range of institutions in the UK, designed to “provide a
framework for undergraduate degree programmes in English.” It
was subject to quite widespread consultation within the English
Studies community before being adopted and published by the
Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education in the UK in
2000, with a second version following in 2007 (see English Subject Benchmark Statement 2000, rev. 2007). Proposals for undergraduate programmes of study in English are obliged to make reference to it, and to indicate how the programme complies with the
framework it lays down. The Benchmark document did not specify individual texts for study, and indeed took a very generous
view of what the study of English could include: “In addition to
the study of literature and language, the subject can also incorporate comparative literature and literature in translation, drama,
creative writing, film, and the study of non-literary texts.” The
only change of substance in the document between 2000 and 2007
was the insertion of a paragraph (2.3) noting the extraordinary
growth of Creative Writing within English Studies, its popularity
with students, and its “close and productive affinity with the study
of English literature and language.”
55
In setting out the “subject knowledge” a graduate in English
should be able to demonstrate having acquired the document
recognised a wide diversity of approach and content within degree programmes. It is significant, however, that the one stipulation it felt it had to make was that, for Single Honours students,
the curriculum had to include “knowledge of writing from periods before 1800” – a clear recognition that, in the absence of
such a stipulation, the inexorable drift towards study of contemporary or near-contemporary literary works would continue, at
the expense of older works.
The same trend towards the contemporary is seen also in data
from a report entitled “Survey of the English Curriculum and
Teaching in UK Higher Education,” published for the English
Subject Centre in 2003 (Halcrow Group Limited 2003). This was
based on information provided by teachers of English at fiftythree institutions in the UK (just under half of the total). One of
the sections of the report was about “coverage and aims” of the
curriculum. This began by seeking responses on the factors or
principles that guided academics in the design of degree courses
in English. The highest importance was placed on “coverage of
literary periods,” which was followed closely by development of
“reading/interpretative skills” and “specialist interests of staff.”
The importance of “giving students choice” came fourth in order
of priority. Also important was the study of individual authors,
cultural history, theme-based courses and theoretical issues.
The next section surveyed the range of compulsory and optional courses offered to students. The courses (or modules)
most often made compulsory include English Language, Critical/Literary Theory, Shakespeare, and a range of period courses.
The range of optional courses offered is very wide indeed, with
the two highest ranking being Late-Twentieth Century and Contemporary and Modernist Writing, followed by Renaissance,
Victorian and Medieval. The others are mostly linked to period
study, with a particular emphasis on the modern and contemporary, including Women’s Writing, Creative Writing, Film, and
Twentieth-Century American Literature.
The final section which is relevant here is an analysis of the
popularity of these optional courses with students. Most popular
of all are courses in Late-Twentieth Century and Contemporary
56
Writing, followed by courses on Shakespeare, Modernist Writing, Twentieth-Century American, Women’s Writing, Creative
Writing, and Film. The pull of the modern – with the sole exception of Shakespeare – is very clear.
Here, then, is evidence of ways in which the curriculum in
English is changing. There can be little doubt that some of these
changes are related to competition between some institutions for
students. The clearest example of this is the rapid growth of provision in Creative Writing, in response to strong student demand. Sensitivity to student interests and preferences is likely to
increase if, as seems possible, student numbers begin to decline.
English has historically been a highly popular subject with students in the UK, but there are some signs that the study of English literature (more so than English language) may be declining
in schools, leading to a decline in applications for university
places, and that numbers of undergraduates in the subject have
remained buoyant only because less well-qualified students have
been accepted (see Barry 2002: 303–5).
What, then, should the relationship between the “canon” and
the “curriculum” be? It seems to me that it would be helpful to
keep the two concepts separate as much as possible, and to recognise that a curriculum is – and should be – much more open to
change than a canon. It is true, and important, that the literary
canon (as opposed to a scriptural one) is not, and never has been,
a fixed and immutable entity. For an example of the way in which
it changes, we need only think of novels by Defoe or Dickens. In
their own ages, these novels were regarded as mere popular entertainment, but they are now regarded as classics of English literature, and are very firmly in the canon. It has recently been argued
that the reception of literary texts involves a continuous process of
“mutation,” and that “for canonization to occur, a text must be
inherited, transformed, responded to, deformed, developed, and
imitated – in future texts, in the literary and other traditions to
which it gives birth, in being read” (Bennett and Royle 2004:
230). The extraordinary reception history of Defoe’s Robinson
Crusoe, and the myriad ways in which it has been circulated,
adapted, appropriated and “written back” to, is an excellent example of this. However, to recognise that the literary canon changes
over time does not mean that it has no stability whatsoever. In57
deed if the concept is to have any continuing usefulness, the
“canon” must represent in some sense the body of works that are
agreed (at least for the time being) to be “valuable,” and around
which develops a scholarly and critical discourse. It is hard to see
how the discussion of literary texts could proceed in the complete
absence of an agreed “canon” of works.
A “curriculum,” by contrast, has no requirement to be representative, or to have any evaluative force. It certainly carries academic
authority, and no doubt, in a context where the profession of literary
criticism is largely consolidated in academic institutions, it will interact in complex ways with canon-formation. For example, their
inclusion on school or university curricula may ensure that otherwise little-known texts are made available in print and thus may
potentially assume “canonical” status. Nevertheless, a curriculum is
essentially something that is put together for specific pedagogic
purposes and which can be constantly changed and revised at will.
Those who construct a curriculum in literature should feel themselves at perfect liberty to include works from outside as well as
inside the canon, depending on what it is that they want to teach,
and that they feel will engage the interest of students. Change in the
curriculum is not a matter of the same long-term cultural significance as change in the literary canon.
Works Cited
Barry, Peter. “Editorial Commentary.” English, 51, Autumn
(2002): 303–5.
Bennett, Andrew and Nicholas Royle, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory, third edition. Harlow: Pearson
Longman, 2004.
Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and School of
the Ages. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994.
Dobson, Michael. The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation and Authorship, 1660–1769. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1992.
Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction, second edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996.
58
English Subject Benchmark Statement. London: Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, 2000; rev. 2007. 20 August 2009. <http://www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/
benchmark/honours/default.asp>.
English: The National Curriculum for England. London: Department for Education and Employment and Qualifications
and Curriculum Authority, 1999, 2009. 10 August 2009.
<http://curriculum.qca.org.uk/key-stages-3-and-4/subjects/
english/keystage3/>.
Fowler, Alastair. “Genre and the Literary Canon.” New Literary
History, 11 (1979): 97–119.
Gorak, Jan. The Making of the Modern Canon: Genesis and Crisis of a Literary Idea. London: Athlone Press, 1991.
Guillory, John. Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary
Canon Formation. Chicago: Chicago University Press,
1993.
Halcrow Group Limited, with Jane Gawthrope and Philip Martin. Survey of the English Curriculum and Teaching in UK
Higher Education. English Subject Centre Report Number
8, October 2003. 10 August 2009. <http://www.english. heacademy.ac.uk/explore/publications/reports.php>.
Kermode, Frank ed. Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot. London: Faber
and Faber, 1975.
Kermode, Frank. Forms of Attention. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1985.
Owens, W. R. and Lizbeth Goodman eds. Shakespeare, Aphra
Behn and the Canon. London: Routledge, 1996.
Pound, Ezra. ABC of Reading. London: Faber and Faber, 1961.
Ross, Trevor. The Making of the English Literary Canon: From
the Middle Ages to the Late Eighteenth Century. Montreal:
McGill-Queens University Press, 1998.
St Clair, William. The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Taylor, Gary. Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History from
the Restoration to the Present. London: Hogarth Press,
1990.
59
2
English Studies in Romanian Higher
Education: A Brief Diachronic View
Mihaela Irimia
One
As a subject taught at tertiary level, English Studies is roughly a
one-century old discipline. To do justice to its historical evolution and its historico-cultural embeddedness, at least at this
point, it had better be referred to as a cluster of disciplines in
Romanian education and, more extensively, in Romanian culture. Its variegated nature may be accounted for in terms of its
increasingly richer and more consistent contents. The discipline’s spread also needs to be kept in view, and can be seen
horizontally in terms of its geographic extension, or vertically in
terms of the hierarchic order and qualitative status of its components. These are factors of undeniable relevance in any analysis
of the twentieth-century development of English Studies.
No Romanian adult with a decent amount of education will
have failed to decode at least once in their lifetime the catchphrase of identitary purport, “tout Roumain est Français.” The
phrase is so catchy that it walks on its own legs, as it were. As it
sends an immediate echo in Romanian-speaking circles, it has
made cultural currency in twentieth-century Romanian. It provides a fairly comprehensive definition of the “Romanian character,” whatever that may be. Rhetorically elegant to win over
sophisticated audiences, the phrase has also proved influential
among people with less refined or detailed knowledge of the
Romanian language, culture, or history. Briefly, it does ring a
bell, and a very meaningful one, when it comes to defining the
national character; and it seems the more persuasive, if more
elusive, while addressing foreign interlocutors. A schematic picture of “the Romanian character” put forth in the language of
Voltaire or Molière or Descartes is regarded as peculiarly indicative. As in any imagological context, the choice of terms and
61
concepts is an instrument in the analyst’s hands. In the particular
case of foreign languages, be they subjects taught in schools or
at university level, or regarded as carriers of cultural identity,
things are not widely different.
Unlike most Western cultures, Romanian culture comes of
age at the same time as its national identity. It goes nonetheless
through the typically European wave of revolutionary movements in the mid-nineteenth century, deploying the apposite
symbolic weapons in an identity-based confrontation of no small
consequences, in the wider European cultural context. Known as
Romanticism, in literary terms, this period is coextensive with
modernization throughout the society of the time. The conceptual scaffolding, like indeed the philosophical, aesthetic, moral,
civic, political and national agenda of Romanian Romanticism,
is so intimately related to the question of modernization that in
this particular case Romanticism as both historical occurrence
and forma mentis stands for modernity as such (Călinescu 1941:
125-418; Cornea 2009: 359-526).
Two sets of mentalities are historically supplanted in the
process: the Wallachian-Moldavian, with its Byzantine-Slavonic
background; and the Transylvanian, with its Austro-Hungarian
one. Behind them lies an essentially Romance identity hidden in
Cyrillic script, to the effect that what sounds Latin to the ear
reads Slav to the eye. The “old age” of religious literature,
courtly chronicles and princely edicts (Călinescu 1941: 67) is
irreversibly superseded by a process of Westernization between
the late eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth. In
the absence of a Western-style Renaissance, with the exception
of Polish influence in Moldavia, and of a genuine Enlightenment, with the exception of Şcoala Ardeleană (the Transylvanian
School), Romanian Romanticism takes upon itself the task of
defending and asserting the foundationalist agenda of European
culture at home. Ion Eliade Rădulescu, Mihail Kogălniceanu,
Nicolae Bălcescu, Alecu Russo, Dimitrie Bolintineanu, Cezar
Bolliac, like the bard Vasile Alecsandri and the national poet
Mihai Eminescu, are significant names, in this respect. Hence its
strong civic component, its national and nationalistic accents, its
militant tone. Romanian modernity steps in as a belated phenomenon combining Enlightenment with Romantic principles,
62
values and institutions. As in other cultures in Central-Eastern
Europe, this is more obviously part of a long modernity process
than in the Western half of the old continent.
From the educational and literary, and effectively the cultural, perspective the 1820s to the 1840s witness the shaping of
the national idea as they burn long phases of historical evolution,
combine genres and start conceiving of modern institutions.
Synchronization with the Occident becomes the rule of the day.
The elite travel to the West, they seek emancipated schooling
and hold the strong belief that this will promote them up the
scale of values, from the strictly spiritual to the downright pragmatic. People in big money send their sons, and more scantily
their daughters, on a sui generis Grand Tour, and expect their
offspring to come back home mature in every sense of the word.
The latest French fashion in garments and hairstyles goes hand
in hand with enjoying and clamorously delighting in translations
from world literature. Molière, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Goethe,
Ossian, Young, Volney, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Scott,
Byron, Hugo, Schiller, Pushkin and the like come to the fore,
leaving behind Greek-speaking moralizing stories and belated
romances grafted on home-made balladry, all texts that had been
the pastime of the literate few, if narratives of wider cultural
recognition (Călinescu 1941: 125-166).
The intelligentsia of the day deem it their duty to promote
civilization and progress in the track of the Encyclopédie and the
French Revolution. This is the time when Romanian wins the
battle of its full acknowledgment as the national language of the
three historical principalities, putting a definite end to its schizophrenic condition. From now on, what sounds Latin to the ear
reads Latin to the eye. The first literary text printed in exclusively Latin script just one year before the revolutionary 1848 is
Byron’s Don Juan, Cantos I and II, from the French! The salons
had cultivated a taste for Englishness via the French cultural filter, in both Walachia and Moldavia, while German was the literary conduit for the intellectual circles in Transylvania. At the
crossroads not only of the great powers, but also of their respective cultures and linguistic vehicles, the English language, its
literature, English-speaking culture and civilization treads onto
the stage of public life in what is now Romania.
63
More than ever cosmopolitanism is the decisive factor in the establishment of an institutionalized culture. A civically sensitive
press advocates the case of Romanianness before the historic 1859
Union of Walachia and Moldavia as the national state, while it will
not be before 1877 that national independence from the Ottoman
rule is attained. Education takes impressive leaps, with universities
founded in Iaşi (Jassy), in 1860, and Bucureşti (Bucharest), in 1864,
focusing on the bulk of national literature, while cultural societies
and theatres militate for Romanian identity. Between concept and
sentiment, the national spirit is in equal proportion discovered and
invented, like elsewhere on the Continent. The Transylvanian
School had capitalized on the old chroniclers’ “we come from
Rome” syndrome. Snowballing into radical Romanticism, related
issues come to the fore, among which the conviction that national
frontiers, given to humans by nature and God, are sacrosanct, as are
racial and linguistic purity. An obsession with the heroic grandeur
of national history is found in mid-nineteenth-century classics’ texts
advancing the imperative that all Romanians have one language
and one literature common to all of them, and that this cultural asset
must be coupled with the moral commandment of union through
culture. This is the case of Kogălniceanu, Bălcescu, and Bolliac, in
the first place, all authors of manifestos supporting the common
national appurtenance of Romanians in the historical principalities.
Two
To recapitulate: historically, politically and emotionally Frenchoriented Romanian culture asserts itself as by and large permissive to Western values, a process markedly that is obvious in its
modern age. The shelves of its real or imaginary libraries have
hosted compendious editions of the great Western classics. All
the great names stemming from this tradition have been honoured. Due homage has been paid to relevant moments in European history. These are all proofs of synchronization with modern tendencies across the continent. While definitely European
itself, Romanian culture has traditionally made a religion of emphasizing its Latin origin and Christian allegiance, components
regarded as assets in the romanticized nineteenth-century discourse of national promotion. Only in recent decades, like every
64
other national culture in Europe, has it been more sensitive to
the allogenous element in its identity.
The case of English and Englishness or, rather, Britishness,
is a special one in the Romanian collective unconscious. “England and the English” is the current metonymic umbrella under
which it travels. Hardly felt as offensive by cultural or political
elites in this country, it may appear less representative to early
twentieth-century audiences, now exposed in unprecedented
measure to multiculturalism and cultural diversity of various
types. To British people, instead, the formula sounds little convincing, even less satisfactory, these days, owing to the same
developments and attitudes in recent years. Globalization is certainly at work in such matters, as well. But not one really
widely-read and widely-travelled Romanian would think of placing “the English” outside “the Continent” – that odd category
which the British consider so natural.
Modern Romanian culture cannot separate its legacy and
filiation from its status as the Hinterland of France. Added to its
long-term memory, this results in a telling identity complex: on
the one hand, the acute awareness of a wrong location on the
map, far from its “natural” source – Rome, in premodern times;
on the other, a sense of prolonged estrangement for being kept
away from its full-fledged modern metropolis – Paris. Anecdotal
cultural history has it that the Poles and the Romanians have
done the wrong thing in legitimising their religious identities
given their geographic locations and ethnic stocks: of Slav descent, the Poles should have been Christian Orthodox, while the
Latin roots of the Romanians should have allotted them to the
Roman Catholic community. In both cases, narratives of national identity have taken such matters into account. Along the
centuries, Romanian identity has confected protectors deemed
capable of supplementing its symbolic bereavement from Rome
and Paris.
Indeed, a few symbolic swings of the pendulum have traversed modern Romanian identity, promoting this or that currency
on the regional and then international cultural market. The language of officialdom is Greek, Turkish and even Russian in the
mid- and late 1800s, as the political wand orchestrates one or
another identity-based symphony or cacophony. Their coexis65
tence with the widely spoken vernacular provides an image similar to that of the parallel use of Norman French and AngloSaxon in the medieval history of English and Englishness. The
use of French supplanting the former languages of authority in
the wake of European revolutions only reinforces the view of a
“schizophrenic” cultural identity. French, then German and Italian, French again, and, by violent historical accident, Russian
again, coins are the cultural currency of the historical provinces
all through the 1900s (Piru 1981: 45-167, 248-278, 347-397).
Romanian modernity, in broad lines, completes the cycle of its
being under more than one foreign mantle, to show a fully
grown body only in the 20th century.
The last third of the past century witnesses the eventual and,
as it seems, irreversible, replacement of these historically validated coins with English coins, to carry on in metaphoric terms.
Minted in the workshops of sameness and otherness, these effigies of cultural appurtenance are all underlain by the Latin element. “We come from Rome” is the echo resounding along the
corridors of our national identity. When English came massively
to the fore already in the early 1970s and appeared to not only
not lose, but gain menacingly more and more terrain in the next
decade, it became fairly obvious that something was happening
running against the grain of historically settled accounts. As an
academic subject, English became the one leading modern language in Romanian education, superseding diplomatic and chic
French, cornering the easily understandable idiom of the Italian
peninsula (some of our ancestors’ home), putting to shame German, the language of enterprising and rigorous communities
(some on Romania’s national territory).
Three
A document signed in the 1580s by Franco Sivori (Bodea 1974:
810) has come down to us. It deserves some attention not only
for political, but more potently for cultural reasons. Sivori was
the Italian secretary to the then Wallachian Prince Petru Cercel
and an apparently honest judge of the former’s deeds. He praised
the Prince’s taste for Italian gardens betraying an opening to
Western Latinity, and commended his decision to have a new
and modern capital built in accordance with European architec66
tural requirements. One of the things he seems to have admired
in the natives of the land remains though of the linguistic domain. We learn that the educated classes were very good linguists, that what we now call metonymically for the historical
principalities, the “Romanians,” were perceived as able to pick
up any language with no difficulty. Not few, according to the
same Italian source, were found conversant with four or five
languages for daily communication.
This testimony carries significant weight in specialized linguistic circles as a signal transcending the long and slow phases of
modernization in Romanian culture. Sivori’s account lays bare a
phenomenon not uncommon in populations living under imperial
rule. Yet the case of Romanian may be somewhat sui generis as it
shows reiterated changes of direction in pursuance of synchronization. In immediate touch with a number of Oriental languages in its
premodern history, Romanian culture perceives the Frenchification
of the administration, education and public life as a huge leap forward on the path to modernity, in the nineteenth century. The takeover performed by English in the last three decades of the twentieth
century was of equal force and significance.
Let us consider the emergence of English as a university
subject, or else of “Anglophoneness [...] in [an] ordinarily nonAnglophone context” (Engler and Haas 2000: 132), against this
complex cultural background. The case of Bucharest is the most
exciting beyond the status of the city as capital of the modern
nation-state. The University of Bucharest was founded in 1864.
It promoted Latin as the one linguistic antenna able to capture
the specificity of the humanities. In contradistinction, and following belatedly a Western tradition whereby the classics legitimated the moderns, French was cultivated as the langue de
société of the place, only elegantly transplanted into academic
environments. It took another decade for the other Latin sister
language, Italian to step in. It was not before the 1890s though
that Slav languages were taken on board. Yet another decade on,
German became a discipline in its own right. Spanish was not
ushered in before 1930, while Russian, in 1934, rounded off the
first three decades. Finally, in the turbulent year 1936 a Chair of
English was set up. Professor John Burbank was the first head of
an English Department at the University of Bucharest ever. He
67
had an assistant of native stock in the person of the late Professor Ana Cartianu, at the time a fresh graduate from Bedford College, University of London.
But English had been taught as a university subject in the Romanian academe before the establishment of the Bucharest chair.
Iaşi (Jassy) had prefaced the move with its own chair as early as
1917. This had been the fruit of Professor Ion Botez’s assiduous
activity. It was followed by the foundation of the Cluj chair in
1921, owing to Professor Peter Grimm. Thus within roughly a
quarter of a century, and in times of troubled European history,
English assumed a dignity consistently praised by historian and philologist Nicolae Iorga. His studies about Anglo-Romanian relations
go to the press in 1917, and 1931, with, in the last case, a preface
signed by R.W. Seton Watson, Professor of London University. An
Anglo-Romanian Association had been set up in London in 1917,
with such distinguished members as the Archbishop of Canterbury
and the Lord Mayor. 1922 saw the creation, in the British capital, of
a Romanian Chair bearing the indelible imprint of Professor Marcu
Beza. Beza’s impeccable knowledge of English culture was doubled by refined Oriental and comparative folklore studies. In 1930,
the now world-famous historian Iorga was bestowed upon an honorary title by Oxford University.
Bogdan Petriceicu Haşdeu and George Călinescu complete
the list of famous Romanians with sustained interest in English
culture at a time preceding any form of institutionalization of
English Studies in Romania. The beginnings of English as a tertiary level education subject are now documented. During its
fiftieth anniversary, at the University of Bucharest, the much
regretted Professor Ana Cartianu provided a description not devoid of pathetic nuances (Dumitriu 1987: 63).
To give a sense of conditions at the time, let us underline
that there was no room for an English Seminar, and there were
scarcely any printed materials for the use of staff or students. To
add to this paucity of means, the staff was severely undermanned, as it simply consisted of the head of department and his
assistant, otherwise exceptionally dedicated and hardworking.
More severe still was the situation of the student population
whom they served. There was but a handful of young people
with a consistent French humanistic education from secondary
68
school, but no English. Professor Burbank offered a first course
in English poetry on chronological grounds, but focusing on absolutely basic skills, such as the plain and literal decoding of the
primary texts (Dumitriu 1987: 63). These were provided with no
insignificant amount of effort. Close reading became an intellectual exercise out of mere necessity, while it was the fashion of
the day in the West and in America. A symbolic Mr. Jourdain –
the French, again!, Molière, encore une fois – was impersonated
in staff and students willing to go English!
The irony of things is that the newly established English Department in Bucharest had a short-lived quiet existence. Soon its
founder’s contract expired and a vacuum threatened to annihilate
the only just-started enterprise. Professor Dragoş Portopopescu,
from Chernovtsy University, succeeded John Burbank and acted
as head till his tragic death in the deeply problematic year 1948.
There followed an innovative drive, with English pursuing the
path of other humanities and gradually gaining the status of a
recognized discipline. Protopopescu brought to the place and the
subject called “English” the fame of a distinguished specialist.
Of rare cultural distinction, a gentleman in every sense of the
word, he was an astute translator from the English original,
rather than from (usually French) mediated versions.
Author of The English Phenomenon (1936), he anticipates
with grace and erudition developments that we now consider
“modern,” if not downright “postmodern.” The thorough reader
will detect, between the lines of his otherwise traditional literary
history, a persistent interest in identifying the spirit of the literature/culture under scrutiny. When he embarks upon analysing
the “national” English character, he plumbs its depth in Shakespeare and the novel. This is a couple of symbolic worth for the
modern spirit as such, and one that has been theorized on by critics of the forefront. In anticipation of studies on the emergence
of the English literary canon in conjunction with the institution
of the national poet (Dobson 1992), interpretative scholarship
(Walsh 1997) and the origin and spread of the national spirit
(Anderson 1983), the Romanian Anglicist passes solid critical
judgments. Protopopescu’s analysis is doubled by observations
easily qualifying now as pertaining to imagology, mentalities, or
cultural specificity. His comprehensive study of Congreve, a
69
brilliant doctoral dissertation under the supervision of the celebrated Sorbonne Professor Louis Cazamian, bears evidence to
this. Unfortunately unpublished, the dissertation capitalizes on
previous investigations (Protopopescu 1923). The Romanian
critic halts more than once to consider the imbricated discourse
of modernity, as when he takes the Restoration dramatist and
theoretician as testimony for the constitutive difference between
romance and the novel. We normally refer the debate to Fielding’s theorizing metatexts, yet back in the 1920s most pertinent
statements were made in Paris to show that this particular “English phenomenon” had a longer tradition still. They were made
by a remarkable young Romanian intellectual.
The 1948 educational reform resulted in a number of reshuffles, some profitable, like the emergence of timid American
Studies, some less so, like the later fusion of several institutions
dealing with foreign languages under the aegis of the Faculty of
Philology. Professor Dumitru Chiţoran, founder of the most
comprehensive and cosmopolitan school of English linguistics in
Romanian higher education, was head of department and then
Dean of the Faculty of Germanic Languages and Literatures,
into the 1960s and 1970s. By then, our golden generation of Anglicists had made an assertive appearance in the public arena.
Mentors of dozens of generations, translators of literary masterpieces from and into English, literary critics and linguists, the
late Leon Leviţchi, Dan Duţescu, Virgil Ştefănescu-Drăgăneşti,
Andrei Bantaş, and Ioan Aurel Preda have remained as many
luminaries in our memory. The Leviţchi-Duţescu tandem cannot
be dissociated from the best versions of Shakespearean and,
more widely, Elizabethan dramatic texts in Romanian (Duţescu
and Leviţchi 1964, Leviţchi 1964, Leviţchi 1982-1992), while
Dan Duţescu has left behind the only single-handed translation
of the complete works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1964, 1978, 1986),
an absolute record not only in Romanian but in any other culture. Ştefănescu-Drăgăneşti foreshadows a consistent history of
English and Romanian language studies (1970), Andrei Bantaş
remains a most talented lexicographer (with Leviţchi and
Gheorghiţoiu 1974, with Leviţchi and Nicolescu 1974) and
translator (Wilde 1967, Butler 1970, Thackeray 1975, Hardy
70
1984), while Ioan Aurel Preda is the indisputable theoretician of
English Romanticism in this country (1982, 1994, 1998).
The celebration of half a century of English Studies in Romanian education, in 1986, was crowned by forty four generations of specialists in the field produced at the University of Bucharest. Fresh blood had started to be pumped into the English
Department in the early 1970s, to the effect that one and a half
decades after, the contrastive analysis and generative linguistics
team was flanked by a solid British and a strong American literature and civilization component. The 1989 changes only favoured a considerable expansion of the last two, with unprecedented MA programmes in British Cultural Studies and American Studies making impressive contributions to the general progress of English as an academic discipline. They have also emphasized a marked interdisciplinary approach to the cultural
phenomenon, opening up avenues and perspectives practically
unattained before, and placing Anglo-American Studies at the
level of contemporary developments in the Western academe.
Indisputably the language of communication for whomever
wants to pursue serious academic studies in Romania and then
overseas, English has become a tool for non-Anglicists as well,
and one could hardly imagine research and innovation in numerous fields without its substantial contribution. Departments of
foreign languages for special purposes have been solidly ESP
departments since before the fall of the Wall in the whole of
Central Europe. The yearly student intake at the English Department of Bucharest University has more than quadrupled
since the early 1990s and teaching staff has almost doubled,
while quite a substantial number of MA programmes either focus on British and American cultural identity or resort to English
as the vehicle of other disciplines or, more often than not, interdisciplinary studies. The one really great record in postcommunist years has been the impressive amount of grants,
scholarships and fellowships in English-speaking countries
which have brought exposure for Romanian Anglicists. The
British Council and British universities are now natural contacts
without whom we could hardly be what we are, as are the cultural sections of the US and Canadian embassies and the transAtlantic academic counterparts of Romanian universities.
71
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Butler, Samuel. Şi tu vei fi ţărână [The Way of All Flesh]. Trans.
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Iorga, Nicolae. Histoire de relations anglo-romaines [A History
of Anglo-Romanian Relations]. Jassy: Imprimerie “Progresul”, 1917.
Leviţchi, Leon. Teatrul Renaşterii engleze [English Renaissance
Drama]. Bucureşti: Editura Pentru Literatură Universală,
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Leviţchi, Leon, Andrei Bantaş and Adrian Nicolescu. Dicţionar
englez-român [English-Romanian Dictionary]. Bucureşti:
Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, 1974.
Piru, Alexandru. Istoria literaturii române de la început pînă azi
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the Present Day]. Bucureşti: Univers, 1981.
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Angela Ioan ed. Arte poetice – Romansimul [Poetic Arts –
Romanticism]. Bucureşti: Editura Univers, 1982, 116-211.
Preda, Ioan Aurel. Studies in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic
Literature. Bucharest: Bucharest University Press, 1994.
Preda, Ioan Aurel. English Romantic Poetics. Iaşi: Institutul
European, 1998.
73
Protopopescu, Dragosh. Unknown Congreve: A Sheaf of Poetical Scraps, one of which has not hitherto been published,
together with more lines in his praise, and a new letter. Bucureşti: Cultura Naţională, 1923.
Protopopescu, Dragoş. Fenomenul englez [The English Phenomenon]. Ediţie îngrijită de Dan Grigorescu şi Horia
Florian Popescu, Studiu introductiv, note şi comentarii de
Dan Grigorescu, Bucureşti: Editura “Grai şi Suflet – Cultura
naţională,” 1996.
Shakespeare, William. Opere complete [Complete Works], Voll.
I-IX, ediţie îngrijită, studiu introductiv, note de istorie literară şi comentarii de Leon D. Leviţchi; note de Virgil Ştefănescu-Drăgăneşti. Bucureşti: Univers, 1982-1992.
Ştefănescu-Drăgăneşti, Virgiliu and Martin Murrell. Romanian.
London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1970.
Thackeray, William Makepeace. Virginienii [The Virginians].
Trans. Andrei Bantaş. Bucureşti: Univers, 1975.
Walsh, Marcus. Shakespeare, Milton, and Eighteenth-Century
Literary Editing: The Beginnings of Interpretative Scholarship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Wilde, Oscar. Teatru (Lady Wyndermere şi evantaiul ei, O femeie fără importanţă, Un soţ ideal, Salomé) [Plays (Lady
Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of no Importance, An Ideal
Husband, Salome)]. Trans. Andrei Bantaş. Bucureşti: Univers, 1967.
74
3
Defining the Literary Parameters
of Englishness in Bulgarian Academic
Culture: the Case of Marco Mincoff’s
History of English Literature
Ludmilla Kostova
Over the last eighty years or so, the writing of literary histories
has been a major point of reference in debates over the “nature”
and functions of literature and literary criticism. While earlier
commentaries tended to focus on the difficulties besetting the
production of properly literary histories (cf. Wellek and Warren’s
diagnosis of the failure of most literary-historical studies to be
strictu senso literary and historical [1977: 253]), the resurgence
of ethno-nationalisms and other forms of cultural and religious
particularism in the 1990s and 2000s has led to the recontextualisation of the study of literary-historical writing and a
preoccupation with its cultural-political “uses.” To date the dominant trend among scholars addressing the subject is to stress the
role that literary histories have played in nation-building processes, especially in the (re-)invention of the national past and its
canonisation and commemoration through the efforts of academies, universities and other professional bodies and institutions.1
This has led to the neglect of historical works on the literatures of
other nations. Such neglect is unjustified: rather than being divorced from identity politics, histories of foreign literatures are
known to have heightened awareness of cultural differences and
shared features across regions and continents, as is borne out by
Hippolyte Taine’s controversial but nonetheless seminal History
of English Literature (1863) and the writings of the eminent philologists Erich Auerbach, Leo Spitzer and Ernst Robert Curtius.
Moreover, historical accounts of foreign literatures have moulded
large-scale pedagogic projects, as is demonstrated by the example
of Émile Legouis and Louis Cazamian’s 1924 A History of Eng75
lish Literature, which became a standard textbook for university
students throughout Europe in the interwar years and the three
decades following the Second World War.
This article attempts to redress the current critical imbalance
by briefly considering histories of foreign literatures within the
broad context of cross-cultural literary reception, examining the
ways in which literary canons are formed in “non-native” cultural communities and singling out a major line of development
in the reception of English-language literatures in the Bulgarian
context. However, the main focus here is on a specific case
study: Bulgarian scholar Marco Mincoff’s two-volume History
of English Literature. Parts of this text were first made available
for circulation in 1947, it subsequently went through several editions (roughly, between 1970 and the late 1990s2) and is still being used by students of English3 and other readers with an interest in English literature. The History has thus played a key role
in the development of English studies in Bulgaria and this, in
itself, seems a satisfactory reason for concentrating on it here.
To be able to contextualise Mincoff’s book and motivate our
choice still further, we need to glance briefly at its author’s professional biography insofar as it, too, provides insights into the
cultural and institutional make-up of English studies in Bulgaria.
Marco Mincoff (1909 – 1987) taught at the University of Sofia
between 1939 and the mid-1970s. Prior to his appointment, he
studied in Berlin on a Humboldt scholarship and obtained his
doctoral degree there (Shurbanov and Stamenov 2000: 269).
What Auerbach identified as “the themes and methods of German intellectual history and philology” (quoted in Damrosch
1995: 106) and perceived as a major influence on his own work
also affected Mincoff’s development and this might explain the
wide range of philological skills that he possessed and tried to
pass on to his students and colleagues at the University of Sofia.
He became the founder of that University’s Department of English Philology and initially taught all core subjects on the curriculum (Shurbanov and Stamenov 2000: 270). Subsequently, as
the level of professional expertise within the Sofia Department
became higher, he was able to devote himself to English Renaissance drama, which was his main area of specialisation.
76
Mincoff’s History may be said to continue the nineteenthcentury tradition of narrative histories of literature:4 it presents
the development of English literature over a fairly long period of
time, starting from its “dawn” in the Old English period to what
is traditionally seen as the eclipse of Romanticism in the late
1820s. The book was initially written and circulated at a time
when Bulgaria was dominated by a repressive political regime
that was downright paranoid about “ideological infiltration” in
any shape or form and therefore made the adoption of a “pristine” Marxist approach mandatory for scholars in the humanities. Contrary to that injunction, Mincoff’s History employs interpretative strategies that are historicist but have little to do
with the “standard” Marxist approach and its key analytical
categories of class membership and class struggle. The text
therefore poses important questions about its author’s attitude to
the dominant ideology of the party state and its “cultural hierarchy”5 as well as about conditions of intellectual production and,
indeed, reception in Bulgaria under communism.
As was indicated above, the History went through several
editions and is still being used by students and other interested
readers. Despite generational differences between the text’s consumers, attitudes to it have been predominantly positive. The
general tendency has been to view it as a highly reliable source
of knowledge and information. Regrettably, the History’s exceptional reputation, coupled with a view of Mincoff himself as “the
patriarch” of English studies in Bulgaria (Shurbanov and Stamenov 2000: 269), has resulted in the virtual absence of critical
commentaries on its genre, methods of interpretation, links to
major literary-critical and literary-historical practices and trends
in the West, and the conception of Englishness which it conveys.
This article will reflect on those and other related issues.
I. Contextualising Histories of Foreign Literatures
and Mapping the Reception of English Language
Literatures in Bulgaria
Histories of foreign literatures are part of the area of crosscultural literary reception. While a lot of the factors operating
within this area are similar to the ones that characterise literary
77
reception in “native” cultural contexts, there are also significant
differences – in degree if not in kind. Thus, “non-native” readers
are more likely to approach foreign literary texts, especially realist novels, as “document[s] of life” (Friedberg, quoted in Grosman 2002: 6), providing information about a more or less familiar foreign “reality,” rather than “native” ones. Poetry, on the
other hand, may be interpreted as a literal or metaphorical expression of the “spirit” of the foreign nation to which a particular
poet belongs. In addition, cultural stereotypes about the foreign
nation and other identity constructs strongly affect perceptions
of foreign literatures. Slovene scholar Meta Grosman is correct
in stressing the changeability of such constructs (6). She also
draws attention to the importance of studying “the dynamics of
cross-cultural reading interests and responses [my emphasis]”
(6) and taking into account specific issues such as differences
between generations and changing political attitudes when we
approach “non-native” perceptions of foreign literatures. To
varying degrees, all those complex socio-cultural factors influence the writing – and reading – of histories of foreign literatures.
Constructs of foreign identities and “realities” also impact
upon the formation of canons in “non-native” contexts, and canonisation is a key factor in the conception and writing of literary
histories. In an article that was written over twenty years ago
but, to my mind, still retains a modicum of relevance, Frank J.
Warnke speaks of the influence of “national mirages,” stereotypical representations of “a given foreignness,” along with accidental social and political factors (e.g. scandals and cases of
political persecution), on the canonisation of foreign authors and
texts (Warnke 1988: 50). He defines this kind of canonisation as
“casual” (50) and contrasts it with the “professional” canonisation which results from cognizance of the literary canon(s) accepted in a particular “native” cultural context (51). While
Warnke does not deny that there is an arbitrary element in “professional” canonisation, he definitely privileges it at the expense
of the “casual” variety. This is borne out by his vision of the
“expansion of the Western comparatist’s canon” through the inclusion of “masterpieces” from the “native” canons of “nonWestern literary communities” (55). In other words, the literary
78
comparatist’s journey to the heights of Weltliteratur should follow canonical routes rather than profit from “casual” detours.
Practice clearly shows that the reception of foreign literatures is
affected by both “casual” factors and professional knowledge of
the literary areas that a particular “native” cultural community
regards as canonical.
Despite the reservations we may have about Warnke’s
views, the distinction that he makes between “casual” and “professional” canonisation can be helpful if we decide to approach
literary reception from a historical perspective. “Casual” canonisation usually precedes professional engagements with a foreign
literature or, for that matter, the overall culture of which the literature in question is part. For instance, a movement from “casual” to “professional” canonisation may be said to characterise
the Bulgarian reception of English-language literatures from the
late nineteenth century to the present. Thus, in the 1890s Bulgarian littérateurs were strongly motivated by cultural-political
considerations in their choice of English-language authors and
texts. In addition, some of them worked with a predominantly
negative view of Englishness,6 which was above all conditioned
by a wider Bulgarian reaction to Pax Britannica’s imperialist
policies in the Balkans but was also inspired by a tendency in
certain Continental intellectual circles to denigrate the “insularity,” mercantile spirit and gross materialism of the English (I
have discussed this elsewhere, see Kostova 2008: 48-53). Professional Anglicists, when they appeared on the cultural scene in
the 1920s (Shurbanov and Stamenov 2000: 267), sought to dispel historically and politically conditioned prejudices and increase general knowledge of what one of them termed “AngloSaxondom” (Stefanov 1919).7 The study of authors and texts
that had achieved canonical status in “native” Anglophone contexts was part of this corrective tendency within which we
should also place Mincoff’s History of English Literature. Despite the fact that it was written and circulated under communism, when there was a general return to the “casual” variety of
literary canonisation for political reasons, it is organised through
the selective use of patterns of canonisation typical of “native”
Anglophone contexts in the 1940s and 50s.
79
II. Marco Mincoff’s History of English Literature
(1) Target Audience, Genre and Authorial Stance
Written in English, Mincoff’s History must have been produced
to compensate for a lack: Bulgarian students of English, or, for
that matter, other readers with an interest in English literature,
had limited access to English-language literary-critical texts during the author’s teaching career. This was partly due to the fact
that well-stocked libraries providing books for specialised readers were a relatively new feature in the Bulgarian context: the
National Library in Sofia, for instance, was set up as late as
1878 and the buildings in which it was housed were severely
damaged during the 1944 bombing of Bulgaria’s capital. After
the imposition of a Soviet-style communist regime in 1944 and
especially after that regime’s hardening from 1947 onwards (see
Kostova 2009: 114-115), severe restrictions were imposed on
the flow of books from the West.
Leaving the political factors aside, Mincoff’s situation was
roughly comparable to that of Auerbach during his exile from
Nazi Germany. While teaching in Istanbul, he tried to make up
for the scarcity of scholarly books there by writing his Introduction aux études de philologie romane (published in 1949). His
aim was to enable his Turkish students to master the essentials
of Romance philology. The German-Jewish scholar’s handbook
subsequently benefited from the success of his opus magnum,
Mimesis (published 1946), and his own removal to the heart of
American academe (Auerbach eventually became Professor of
Romance philology at Yale). Nowadays it is frequently cited by
an international community of scholars mostly on account of the
lucid definition of philology it provides.8 Had circumstances
been different, Mincoff’s History might have similarly reached a
specialised but nonetheless fairly wide international audience of
Anglophone readers, regardless of the fact that it was published
in Bulgaria. However, that was definitely not the case.
Despite occasional “thaws,” Bulgaria’s communications
with the West remained difficult throughout the communist era,
and even contacts with “fraternal” countries from the former
Eastern bloc did not result in an unlimited exchange of books
and information. As Shurbanov and Stamenov (2000) have
shown, Mincoff’s work was highly appreciated by the interna80
tionally renowned Soviet Shakespearean Alexander Anikst
(272), and one would presume that there were other eminent
academics in Eastern Europe, who knew about it. It is doubtful,
though, that either Anikst or any of the others went so far as to
use their Bulgarian colleague’s texts in their own classrooms.9
We may therefore assume that Mincoff’s History was primarily
targeted at the relatively small segment of Bulgarian society that
possessed sufficiently high proficiency in English at the time.
Ideally, this segment was intended to develop into an elite of
well-trained professionals possessing specialised knowledge and
philological skills, whose relevance to “lower-order” pedagogic
tasks, such as teaching English to beginners, for instance, was
anything but obvious. Like Auerbach before him, Mincoff must
have seen “the challenge of philology [as] the disciplinary challenge of a craft [my emphasis]” (Lerer 1996: 4), which was hard
to master. The History, alongside with such areas as historical
linguistics, textual criticism, theoretical grammar and stylistic
analysis that Mincoff had likewise tried to make accessible
through textbooks (discussed in Shurbanov and Stamenov 2000:
272-73), was a means towards that end.
Despite the History’s ostensible distance from pragmatic
pedagogic concerns, it exemplifies the genre of the university
textbook which is still among the distinctive features of the Bulgarian academic context. Rather than being a collaborative enterprise, providing different perspectives on the object of investigation, this type of book is usually the work of a single author
and purports to acquaint students with facts and interpretations
that have gained general acceptance in the academic world.
Judging the academic quality of such a book can be difficult because, among other things, it rarely contains explicit references
to the work of other scholars. In this respect Mincoff did better
than most authors of university textbooks in the past and present.10 In his “Preface” to the third revised edition of the History
(1976), he admits that he owes a “debt [of gratitude] to other
workers in the field” and that he has not acknowledged it
through specific references (Vol. 1: 6). Mincoff attributes the
omission to lack of space but likewise claims that crediting his
sources would have been fairly difficult as on a number of occasions, “a hint from another [was] elaborated in a different way”
81
(Vol. 1: 6). This suggests that he perceived his History as being
much more that a compendium of other people’s literaryhistorical and philological ideas.
To make up for the absence of proper referencing in his text,
Mincoff directs his readers to the general reading lists at the end
of each of the two volumes (Vol. 1: 598-601; Vol. 2: 422). The
lists include other comprehensive literary-historical surveys such
as The Cambridge History of English Literature (1907– 1916),
Legouis and Cazamian’s Histoire (1924) and The Oxford History of English Literature (1945), historical studies by E. M. W.
Tillyard, H. B. Charlton and J. D. Wilson and other critics from
the English-speaking world as well as recent work on Shakespeare, the eighteenth-century novel and the romantics by established or rising scholars from the Soviet Union and the GDR
such as Alexander Anikst, Anna Elistratova and Robert
Weimann. Leaving aside the fact that the lists are far from
reader-friendly (the bibliographical items are not arranged in
alphabetical order, no information is provided about places of
publication or publishers), one cannot help asking if they include
all of the texts that the author used or would have liked to recommend to his readers. There is also the question of the critical
texts’ availability to those readers. It is unlikely that students
would have had access to the English- and German-language
studies, listed in the bibliography, outside the Library of Sofia
University or the National Library. Only the critical texts in
Russian were easier to procure and students were in a position to
study them at home.
Curiously, the reading lists contain no references to work
written in Bulgarian and only two of the sources Mincoff lists
were published in Bulgaria and produced by the author himself.
While it cannot be denied that whole areas of English literature
had not yet been explored by Bulgarian scholars, nevertheless,
thought-provoking articles had been written about some of the
romantics, Byron’s work in particular was at the centre of an
important critical debate in the 1920s11 and by the late 1960s
there was already a body of work by some of Mincoff’s own
colleagues at Sofia University (for details see Shurbanov and
Stamenov 2000: 273-76). His apparent indifference to work produced by other Bulgarian scholars corresponds to the stance of
82
an authoritative insider that he adopts in the History. There is
little indication in the book of his Bulgarian identity or of the
fact that he is addressing a predominantly Bulgarian community
of readers.
(2) Conception of Literary History and Methods
of Interpretation
As stated in the Preface to the History, Mincoff’s main aim is
“to present the facts of English literature as a constantly evolving
process [my emphasis]” (Vol. 1: 5). The stress on continuous
evolution rather than on conflicts, contradictions or sudden leaps
marks his conception of literary history as “developmental”
(Perkins 1992: 1). In a history of this kind, the movement from
an earlier phase to a later one involves transference and preservation rather than interruption. Mincoff’s “developmental” view
of literary history is further illustrated by the following passage:
It is always difficult to give anything approaching a clear
definition of a historical period, because no change in outlook
ever comes suddenly, breaking sharply with everything that
has gone before. The new period is always firmly rooted in
what has preceded it, no matter how violently it may seem to
be revolting against it, and its seeds have been slowly germinating long before they burst into full growth. (Vol.1: 207)
This is strongly reminiscent of the ideas of Wilhelm Dilthey for
whom an event goes “through a series of changes of which each
is possible only on the basis of the previous one” (quoted in Perkins 1992: 2), but what is more to the point is that the passage is
part of Mincoff’s section on the Renaissance. “Orthodox” Marxist scholars in post-Second World War Bulgaria usually followed Frederick Engels in representing the Renaissance as “the
greatest progressive revolution that mankind had so far experienced” (Engels 1974: 252) and emphasised the insurmountable
differences between it and the “barbaric” Middle Ages. Mincoff
traces the tendency of exaggerating the magnitude of this particular epochal change back to Enlightenment thought (Vol. 1:
207), thus problematising the conventional opinion, advocated
by the Bulgarian “cultural hierarchy,” that “Marx and Engels
formulated and substantiated a new view of the Renaissance, ...
83
which differed radically from the views of earlier bourgeois cultural historians” (Krylov 1976). The History provides a number
of other examples of such corrective historicising, especially in
the sections on medieval literature (Vol. 1: 7- 206). This was
undoubtedly Mincoff’s reaction to the ubiquity of cliché-ridden
discourse which glorified the founders of Marxism and, in the
process, effectively divorced their ideas from their historical
contexts.
By and large, Mincoff’s approach to English literature is historicist in the sense that he demonstrates how literary works are
formed by their historical contexts and, in the manner of other
“developmental” historians, presents those contexts as “exist[ing] simultaneously with or just prior to the work” (Perkins
2000: 2). His methods of interpretation are similar to those of
the early and mid-twentieth-century British critics listed in his
bibliography: H. B. Charlton, J. Dover Wilson and E. M. W.
Tillyard. As Duncan Salkeld has demonstrated, all three rejected
the early twentieth-century critical favour for genius and the assumption that Shakespeare, for instance, “transcend[ed] mere
contingencies of early modern politics or history” (Salkeld 2001:
60). While latter-day historicists have objected to “the clear distinction [they made] between fiction and reality” and their tendency to regard history as “a realm of objectively ascertained
facts, truths and moral universals” (Salkeld 2001: 61), it cannot
be denied that their interpretations possessed considerable heuristic value at the time.
It should likewise be borne in mind that the texts by Eastern
European scholars that Mincoff included in his bibliography
were not substantially different from the work of the “old” historicists. The differences were a matter of specialised perspective rather than kind. For instance, even Weimann’s approach to
Renaissance drama, which was the most consciously Marxist of
the three mentioned already, took into account the role played by
audiences and performers.12 The Soviet scholars Anikst and
Elistratova similarly studied the historical contexts conditioning
the literary texts with which they were concerned. In addition
Anikst borrowed from Bakhtin in his commentary on the festive
character of Shakespeare’s comedies (see Anikst 1980: 377382). We may surmise that Mincoff added the texts of those au84
thors to his reading lists because they were free from ideological
clichés and fulsome homage to the founders of MarxismLeninism.
In addition, Mincoff’s historicist approach to canonical authors such as Shakespeare, Byron and Shelley contrasts strongly
with “the prevalent mode of literary consumption” (Tihanov
2001: 77) in post-Second World War Bulgaria. The majority of
Marxist literary critics and “lay” readers of the time continued a
tradition of the glorification of literature and the idealisation of
great writers which they had inherited from the nineteenth century
and which was not all that different from the Anglophone trend of
venerating Shakespeare that the “old” historicists reacted against.
Mincoff’s sober examination of the significant circumstances of
writers’ lives and inquiry into the reasons for the psychological
effects that literary works produce differ markedly from the emotionally coloured, celebratory discourse of the majority of his contemporaries in Bulgarian literary criticism.
While Mincoff pays considerable attention to style and
structure, his main concern usually is with the overall meaning
of the literary work rather than with its formal characteristics.13
Such an orientation is intimately linked to what Perkins has
identified as one of the functions of literary history: “to recall
the literature of the past, including much that is now seldom
read” (Perkins 2000: 12). Moreover, close reading in the strict
sense would have limited the scope of his literary history because “it necessarily depends on an extremely small canon”
(Moretti 2000: 57). The History thus came to encourage what
Moretti was to call “distant reading” (Moretti 2000: 56) later on.
However, during Mincoff’s teaching career, this readerly practice was not merely the outcome of the book’s readers’ sheer
inability to deal with the enormous number of plays, poems and
prose texts, included in it, but was also a matter of not having
access to a lot of those texts. As already indicated, access to
Western books, irrespective of when they were produced, was
subject to political control.
To provide a clearer idea of how literary meanings are constructed in the History, I consider a specific example here. Mincoff usually contextualises authorial strategies and plot motifs in
historical terms. In the process, romantic conceptions of original85
ity and uniqueness are rendered problematic. This is well illustrated by his readings of Shakespeare’s plays (Vol. 1: 339-363,
367-379). Interestingly, his level-headed historicising of the plays
is occasionally interrupted by passages such as the following:
The real power of poetry consists in something that defies
analysis. ‘Put up your bright swords, for the dew will rust
them,’ says Othello when confronted by Brabantio’s angry
mob of followers, and the effect lies not in any one point, but
in the flowing together of many effects. (Vol. 1: 377)
The interruption, however, is temporary. The author breaks the
spell of the “real power of poetry” by examining the contexts
behind the multiplicity of effects and relating them to the associations they call up in the reader’s mind (Vol.1: 377). The end
result is a convincing analysis that disproves Mincoff’s opening
statement about powerful poetry’s resistance to analysis.
To the clarification of meaning through textual analysis and
examination of the reader’s associations we can add the parallels
between literary and art history that Mincoff makes in his chapter on the Baroque vision (Vol.1: 457-66), inter alia. Apart from
being influenced by Heinrich Wölfflin’s writing on Baroque, he
may have been familiar with the theory of Wölfflin’s friend Oskar Walzel about the “mutual illumination” of the arts (quoted in
Tihanov 2001: 62). As Galin Tihanov remarks, Walzel tried to
“free the study of literature from the framework[s] of cultural
[and social] history” (62). Given the political situation in Bulgaria and the literary-critical practices sanctioned by the “cultural hierarchy,” one suspects that Mincoff would have welcomed an approach to literature that would be unencumbered by
narratives of class antagonism and simplistic distinctions between “progressive” and “reactionary” writers or “ideologically
acceptable” and “unacceptable” texts. Hence the alternatives
which he provides in his History: the parallel between literary
production and architecture in the chapter on the Gothic renascence (Vol. 1: 63-65), the extended comparisons of the Renaissance and Baroque styles in literature and the visual arts in the
chapter on Baroque noted above and the tentative attempt at a
parallel between the representation of nature in the poetry of the
younger romantics Shelley and Keats and Turner’s mature painterly style (Vol.2: 257).
86
(3) Examining the Parameters of English Literary
Uniqueness
Mincoff’s History is largely informed by the post-Romantic assumption that a national literature is defined by its uniqueness
and difference from other literatures. The author continually
makes parallels between English and French literature but despite shared features that become apparent in the process, he
stresses the specificity of English literary evolution. In the context of the History, English literary uniqueness is a function of
the distinctiveness of English identity. Mincoff’s conception of
that identity plays a key role in the organisation of his literaryhistorical narrative. As was already remarked, his view of Englishness is best linked to a corrective tendency in Bulgarian culture that aimed at dispelling historically and politically conditioned prejudices about the English and, in the words of another
Bulgarian exponent of the same trend, at “driv[ing] away the
mist [that concealed] [their] true image” (Hristoforov 1945: 8).
Following a well-established precedent in nineteenth-century
historiography, the author of the History approaches English national identity in terms of its Anglo-Saxon “roots.” 14 Early in
his book, he describes the Anglo-Saxons as “a warlike and seafaring people” (Vol. 1: 7) and underscores their attachment to
freedom. Love of freedom, on the other hand, is defined as a
shared Old Germanic characteristic: Mincoff speaks of the Anglo-Saxon witena gemot and the Icelandic þing as political institutions safeguarding individual independence and ensuring respect for traditional laws (Vol. 1: 9). For him the Anglo-Saxon
legacy has “foundational importance” (Young 2008: 32) and
exercises lasting influence on the later stages in the development
of English national identity. Significantly, Mincoff views the
Reformation as a manifestation of that influence and goes on to
stress the “Germanicity of Protestantism [my emphasis]” (Pittock 2003: 266). In the wake of a long line of Victorian and Edwardian historians, fiction writers and literary critics, he proclaims Protestantism “a religion of individualism,” continuing
the “tradition of liberty and outspokenness,” itself “an ancient
heritage, if not from the first Anglo-Saxon settlers, at any rate
from their cousins the Normans” (Vol. 1: 226). Mincoff further
maintains that:
87
Religious individualism brings with it literary individualism;
it may be a coincidence, but it is only the Protestant countries that have produced true romantic poetry. England had
two romantic ages – that of Elizabeth, and the 19th c. [...] Catholicism has mainly supported classicism, and England,
though she bowed down to the literary dictatorship of France
for over a century, never felt really at ease with classicism
[my emphasis]. (Vol.1: 226)
Identifying ideological blind spots in this passage is anything but
difficult. The view of the English as essentially individualistic
and therefore predominantly Protestant and constitutionally opposed to the literary restrictions of classicism is at variance with
present-day anti-essentialist attitudes. For most European scholars working in the humanities today, “nothing is ‘naturally
given’ and ethnic, cultural, national or gendered essences do not
exist” (Dahinden 2008: 56). Nor do religious or literary ones.
However, while decrying Mincoff’s essentialism, we should
not forget the conditions in which the earlier stages of his History’s reception occurred. Members of the text’s target audience
under communism were undoubtedly attracted to it on account
of its difference from the bulk of Bulgarian academic accounts
of literary history. In practically all of those, religion was either
written off as “the opiate of the people” or religious conflicts
were defined as clashes masking “genuine” collisions between
antagonistic classes and concealing deeper economic contradictions. Religious doctrines as such were not discussed and most
Bulgarian students had no idea what distinguished Roman Catholicism either from the plentiful crop of Protestantisms that the
Reformation had brought into existence or, for that matter, from
their own country’s traditional religion of Eastern Orthodoxy.
For all its essentialism, Mincoff’s distinction between Catholicism and Protestantism along the lines of individualism and independence must have provided a glimpse into an area that was
seldom deemed worthy of serious examination at the time.
The author’s violation of this particular ideological taboo,
though, should not lead us to idealise his text uncritically. To my
mind, another of the History’s shortcomings is Mincoff’s tendency to portray the British Isles as a principally monocultural
and fundamentally monolingual site. This is a direct conse88
quence of his privileging of Englishness. The author does pay
some attention to Scottish writing, especially in the sections on
the later eighteenth century (Vol. 2: 138-142, 156-165) and Romanticism (Vol. 2: 263-286) and even goes so far as to attempt a
definition of a Scottish cultural identity. On the other hand, the
Irish antecedents of writers such as William Congreve and Richard Brinsley Sheridan are only noted in passing and Welshness
is completely absent from the book.
In addition, Mincoff’s emphasis on English uniqueness appears to have affected the overall organisation of his literaryhistorical narrative. Throughout the History, poetry and verse
drama are given prominence over prose writing. The author identifies “suggestion” as “the very soul of English poetry” (Vol. 2:
51). One of the most memorable narrative strands in his text
traces the emergence of a tradition of poetry of suggestion during
the Renaissance, its subsequent replacement by a rhetorical poetic
model imported from France, and its eventual re-emergence, albeit in a somewhat modified form, during the Age of Romanticism. For Mincoff the rhetorical model is best exemplified by the
literary output of Alexander Pope, whose “poetry of statement,”
he claims, “stands outside the main tradition of English poetry”
(Vol. 2: 51). The author’s account of the birth, flowering, temporary loss and recovery of an “authentically” English tradition of
poetry is by no means novel and can be traced back to statements
made by some of the romantic poets themselves in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It is congruent with Mincoff’s earlier statement about the “two romantic ages” of English
literature and reflects the centrality to the literary historian’s task
of such cultural-symbolic constructs as Englishness.
Mincoff’s narrative of the destiny of the “genuinely” English
tradition of poetry appears to have likewise affected his system
of literary canonisation. While unaffected by distinctions between “reactionary” and “progressive” authors and trends, the
canon he favours in the History is close to that of New Critics in
the sense that he, too, “exalt[s] Donne and the Metaphysicals”
(Wellek 1995: 60) and prefers Keats to Byron. However, he differs from them in his attitude to the classicists Dryden and Pope
whom he regards as outsiders to “the main tradition of English
poetry” (Vol. 2: 51). Unfortunately, his History does not address
89
the development of poetry in the twentieth century. There are
brief references to it, which are scattered through the text and
are not sufficient for us to judge Mincoff’s attitude to T. S. Eliot,
Ezra Pound or any of the other modernists. On the basis of what
we do find in the history, though, we may conclude that Mincoff
revised – rather than reproduced – conceptions of the English
poetic canon in the English-speaking countries which were typical of the 1940s and 1950s and still retained some influence in
the 1960s and 1970s.
Conclusion
In closing, it should be pointed out that the above analysis is incomplete and does not do justice to the multiplicity of themes
and strands of interpretation that Mincoff’s History provides. It
thus leaves room for further discussion and criticism. Such issues as Mincoff’s apparent inclination to represent English literature as the domain of male writers and the marginalisation of
women need to be addressed in all seriousness and related to the
literary historian’s ideological and aesthetic orientation.
As was already remarked, Mincoff’s interpretation of the literary-historical parameters of Englishness shows practically no
traces of Marxist influence, despite the fact that his book was
produced and circulated in Bulgaria under communism. Whether
this was a consequence of a special relationship with the Bulgarian “cultural hierarchy” or a sign of what Andrei Pleşu has diagnosed as the “arbitrariness” of the totalitarian system (Pleşu
1995: 61-71) must remain an open question. There can be very
little doubt, however, that communist-era readers viewed the
History as an alternative account of the evolution of one of the
“core” European literatures15 and appreciated its divergence
from “standard” literary-historical narratives. I attempted to elucidate possible responses to select aspects of Mincoff’s text but
for a more comprehensive representation of readers’ reactions to
it we would need a fully fledged “archaeology of reading”
(Bracewell 2009: 6) that would help us reveal the complexities
and ambiguities of cultural production and consumption under
communism. Mincoff’s History testifies to some of those and rereading and critiquing it in the present is an ethical as well as a
professional task.
90
Notes
1
There is substantial critical literature on the subject. See, for instance,
Linda Hutcheon, “Interventionist Literary Histories: Nostalgic, Pragmatic, or Utopian?” (1998), Nation Building and Writing Literary History, ed. Menno Spiering (1999), Stephen Greenblatt, “Literary History
and Racial Memory” (2001), and the special issue of Modern Language Quarterly 64.2 (June 2003).
2
The edition cited by Alexander Shurbanov and Christo Stamenov in
“English Studies in Bulgaria” (2000) dates back to 1970. The most
recent edition by Pleiada Publishing House, Sofia, came out in 1998.
See http://www.knigabg.com/index.php?page=book&id=5084;
downloaded on 6 Sept. 2009.
3
At present Mincoff’s History is included in the literature syllabuses of
all Bulgarian departments of English studies at the state universities of
Sofia, Veliko Turnovo, Plovdiv and Shumen as well as at the South
Western University of Blagoevgrad.
4
On the specific features of narrative literary histories, see Perkins
1992: 3.
5
I have borrowed the phrase “cultural hierarchy” from Katerina Clark
and Michael Holquist, who use it about a politically powerful faction
of literary theorists in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. See Clark and
Holquist 1984:198.
6
Bulgarian representations of Great Britain and its cultures share the
Continental-European synecdochic reduction of Britishness to Englishness. In the present context I opt for the latter rather than the former
as the debate over the meaning(s) and ethno-cultural provision of Britishness is irrelevant to my topic. Moreover, Mincoff works with a conception of Englishness rather than Britishness.
7
On Stefanov as the “pioneer” of English studies in Bulgaria, see
Shurbanov and Stamenov 2000: 267-8.
8
“Philology is the set of activities that concern themselves systematically with human language, and in particular with works of art
composed in language.” (quoted in Lerer 1)
9
My inference is borne out by information provided by colleagues
from key Romanian universities, who were students of English in the
1970s and 80s. They confirmed that students of English and other specialised readers in their country were unfamiliar with Mincoff’s History at the time. Knowledge of his work only reached Romanian schol-
91
ars after the establishment of the European Society for the Study of
English (ESSE) in 1991 and the exchange of information between national organisations of Anglicists it made possible.
10
A latter-day example of this approach of “withholding” bibliographical references is provided by Simeon Hajikossev’s monumental
History of Western European Literature of which 4 volumes have been
published to date. For details, see the author’s website,
http://www.simeonhadjikosev.com/; downloaded on 10 Sept. 2009.
11
On work about the romantics and Byron’s reception in the 1920s, see
Kostova 2008 53-57.
12
My reference is to Weimann’s early work which is cited by Mincoff,
not to the critic’s more recent studies of literature and the theatre.
13
Wellek reaches a similar conclusion with respect to the critical practice of the New Critics, see Wellek 1995: 55–72.
14
On the background of this view and other ideas of Englishness and
Saxonism in the nineteenth century and later on, see Young 2008 1139. On the influence of Scottish Enlightenment thought on nineteenthcentury Saxonism/Teutonism, see Pittock 2003: 260-272.
15
For an elucidation of “‘core’ literature,” see Moretti 1998: 171 – 174.
Works Cited
Anikst, Alexandr A. Zanayatat na dramaturga (The Dramatist’s
Craft) [Original Russian title: Remeslo dramaturga]. Translated into Bulgarian by Yano Stoevski. Sofia: Nauka i
izkoustvo, 1980.
Bracewell, Wendy. “Balkan Travel Writing: Points of Departure.” Balkan Departures. Travel Writing from Southeastern
Europe. Ed. Wendy Bracewell and Alex Drace-Francis.
New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2009. 1-24.
Clark, Katerina and Michael Holquist. Mikhail Bakhtin. Cambridge, Mass., and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard
UP, 1984.
Dahinden, Janine. “Deconstructing Mythological Foundations of
Ethnic Identities and Ethnic Group Formation: AlbanianSpeaking and New Armenian Immigrants in Switzerland.”
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 34 (2008): 55-76.
92
Damrosch, David. “Auerbach in Exile.” Comparative Literature
47.2 (1995): 97-117.
Engels, Frederick. Dialectics of Nature. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974.
Greenblatt, Stephen. “Literary History and Racial Memory.”
PMLA 116.1 (2000): 48-63.
Grosman, Meta. “American Novels through the Eyes of Slovene
Readers.” Language & Literature XXVII (2002): 512-531.
Hristoforov, Assen. Skitsi iz London [Sketches from London].
Sofia: Hristo G. Danov, 1945.
Hutcheon, Linda. “Interventionist Literary Histories: Nostalgic,
Pragmatic, or Utopian?” Modern Language Quarterly 59.4
(1998): 401-417.
Kostova, Ludmilla. “Claiming a ‘Great Briton’ for Bulgaria: Reflections on Byron’s Bulgarian Reception (1880s-1920s).”
Byron: Heritage and Legacy. Ed. Cheryl A. Wilson. New
York: Palgrave, 2008. 45-60.
Kostova, Ludmilla. “Getting to Know the Big Bad West? Images of Western Europe in Bulgarian Travel Writing of the
Communist Era (1945 – 1985).” Balkan Departures. Travel
Writing from South Eastern Europe. Ed. Wendy Bracewell
and Alex Drace-Francis. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2009.
105-36.
Krylov, B. “Preface.” Marx and Engels on Literature and Art.
Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976. 6 Sept. 2009
<http://marxfaq.org/archive/marx/works/subject/art/
preface.htm>.
Lerer, Seth. Introduction. Literary History and the Challenge of
Philology. Seth Lerer ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1996.
Mincoff, Marco. A History of English Literature. 3rd ed. 2 vols.
Sofia: Naouka i izkoustvo, 1976.
Moretti, Franco. Atlas of the European Novel 1800 – 1900. London: Verso, 1998.
Moretti, Franco. “Conjectures on World Literature.” New Left
Review 1 (2000): 54-68.
93
Perkins, David. Is Literary History Possible? Baltimore and
London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
Pleşu Andrei. “Intellectual Life under Dictatorship.” Representations 49 (1995). 61–71.
Pittock, Murray G. H. “Historiography.” The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment. Ed. Alexander
Broadie. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. 258-279.
Salkeld, Duncan. “New Historicism.” The Cambridge History of
Literary Criticism. Vol. IX: Twentieth-Century Historical,
Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2001. 59-70.
Shurbanov Alexander and Christo Stamenov. “English Studies in
Bulgaria.” European English Studies: Contributions towards
the History of a Discipline. Ed. Balz Engler and Renate Haas.
Published for the European Society for the Study of English by
The English Association, 2000. 267-292.
Spiering, Menno, ed. Nation Building and Writing Literary History. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999.
Stefanov, Konstantin. The Bulgarians and Anglo-Saxondom.
Bern: Paul Haupt, 1919.
Tihanov, Galin. “Why Did Modern Literary Theory Originate in
Central and Eastern Europe? (And Why Is It Now Dead?).”
Common Knowledge 10 (2001): 61-81.
Warnke, Frank J. “The Comparatist's Canon: Some Observations.”
The Comparative Perspective on Literature. Approaches to
Theory and Practice. Ed. Clayton Koelb and Susan Noakes.
Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988. 48-56.
Wellek, René. “The New Criticism: Pro and Contra.” The New
Criticism and Contemporary Literary Theory. Connections
and Continuities. Ed. William J. Spurlin and Michael
Fischer. New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc.,
1995. 55-72.
Wellek, René and Austin Warren. Theory of Literature. 3rd ed.
New York and London: HBJ, 1977.
Young, Robert J. C. The Idea of English Ethnicity. Oxford:
Blackwell, 2008.
94
Websites:
http://www.knigabg.com/index.php?page=book&id=5084;
accessed on 6 Sept. 2009.
http://www.simeonhadjikosev.com/;
accessed on 10 Sept. 2009.
95
4
Teaching English Literature and Cultural
Studies in Bulgaria:
A Contemporary Perspective
Yordan Kosturkov
Since its inception as an academic discipline, English Literature
(including Cultural Studies) has been taught in Bulgaria with the
double purpose of improving the level of language proficiency
of students and cultivating a critical awareness of literary and
cultural issues. While originally a number of university students
were taught the language from a beginner level, for some three
decades from the late 1950s the focus was shifted to a higher
academic level – due to the appearance of the so-called “English
language” secondary schools1 – even though most of the students proceeded to practice their university knowledge as secondary school teachers, translators, interpreters and in tourism. The
demand in terms of employment and application was pretty well
met and the only major change in curricula was the introduction
of special courses in translation. There had been small-scale attempts at problematizing the training, and what had been originally innovative gradually became routine – yet a positive routine yielding good fruit. In fact, without going into too much detail, the described situation was standard with English learning
in general. In the following, however, I draw upon my professional experience and observations to focus primarily on teaching Literature (and Cultural Studies, as much as they were specified) and the impact it had on related areas.
In recent years the situation has changed dramatically. The
demand for catering to employment prospects has increased
enormously and, despite many compromises, is far from being
met. Students now come from their secondary schools with insufficient preparation at an intermediary level of English and are
often unable to cope with the academic level of the core disci97
plines, traditionally taught in English from the introduction of
the very first curriculum. Indeed, many students now prefer to
change their academic interests and major in business and economics, for instance, beyond the narrow context of Liberal Arts
education. Thus, their BA studies of English serve as a language
training basis. The present academic curricula have changed in
an effort to meet these new demands. Further changes have
taken place in adapting the course of studies to average European standards, for better or worse. However, in general the present curricula for BA students are pretty well established. By
comparison, in this regard graduate schools still need significant
restructuring and clarification of their legal status. There are
few, if any, doctoral schools in literature. Part of the problem is
that there are not enough “habilitated” advisers, and most doctoral candidates are in the “self-instruction” option. Under the
present system, the best BA students are often unable to pursue a
master’s degree, eventually to the detriment of doctoral studies.
While external (foreign) professors can act as advisors, doctoral
degrees earned outside the country are at present not easy to legalise locally. The legalisation process (defence etc.) happens
outside universities at a national board session, and the current
option of local universities legalising the status of such doctoral
students and approving “habilitation” is not common and regarded as less prestigious. At present no concern is felt about the
possible overproduction of master’s students, largely because of
the devaluation of the BA degree. In any case such concerns
would not be credible since few choose to go to graduate school
(except for the “retraining graduate school”) and there are many
obstacles in the path of admission to graduate schools. There are
however fears about the overproduction of doctorates.
The common method of delivering literary knowledge in
Bulgaria is the period-wise survey, which makes a great deal of
sense since students entering university are often totally unfamiliar with English or American literature (some initiation used
to happen and may still be happening at the special “language”
secondary schools). Admission to universities does not require
any knowledge of literature but basic general English skills. The
typical traditional structure for contact that has been in use – 2
hours lecture time and 2 hours seminar time – is preserved, even
98
when there is a shortage of the legally required number of ”habilitated” lecturers. There is a growing tendency to problematize
the offered contents of courses in seminars, while lectures predominantly seek to inform. Interactive methods or discussion is
seldom encouraged in lectures and students continue to record
the wisdom of the lecturer in a formal fashion: at a lecture a student typically listens attentively and diligently takes notes. There
is no special training in instruction-skills for professors and they
perform as they wish, usually reproducing their teachers’ practices – best, or worst. This in turn happens with the students subsequently. No training in literature teaching methods is offered
(except for the “retraining graduate school”). Standards of performance prescribed by the Ministry of Education are unnecessarily restrictive about creative methods of literature and language teaching. These standards are not determined by results,
and teachers are required to follow the rigid obsolete routine although it kindles little interest in literature, which is exacerbated
by the decreased general proficiency of English. As a whole the
system is obsessed with linguistic methods. Strict requirements
laid down by methodology experts from the Ministry of Education normally check secondary school teachers’ initiatives of
applying innovative approaches. Many of these teachers find it
convenient to continue to reproduce the basic methods they acquire through observation of their professors at universities.
Despite such misgivings about prevailing approaches to lecturing, the informative lecture is appropriate in Bulgaria also
because there is a shortage of textbooks and books in general.
The situation has improved in recent years primarily through
donations from abroad. In principle students can order books,
but this is a tremendous strain on their often meagre budgets.
Library space in universities is generally very limited indeed and
disposed in extremely traditional ways, thus discouraging many
students from using it. Very few manuals are produced by local
scholars nowadays, although it used to be a common practice in
the past.
Only students of Bulgarian and English literature mixed
groups are exposed to the very useful courses of Western European literature on offer, which place students in a broader literary context. Only at a few universities is literary theory deliv99
ered in English, and mostly theory courses are not tailored to
provide for the needs of learning English (or American) literature. Very few courses in the literatures of English speaking
countries other than Britain or the United States are available. A
very positive recent change has been the introduction of elective
and core elective courses. In relation to the transferable credits
system that has been introduced, there is a need to restructure
core courses, the core electives and electives. Comparative studies are not encouraged and lack of knowledge of the native literature also has a negative impact on English Literature studies.
These deficiencies are naturally reflected in the careers that students pursue after university. A significant number go on to engage in literary or general and special translation (written, as
well as interpreting). I present a few observations here related to
literary translation: the situation is similar in other areas involving translation.
The history of literary translation from English into Bulgarian – which naturally has a significant role in English studies
and a strong impact on publishing – is relatively young, starting
in the late 19th c. Until the 1940s translations reflected the condition of academia, then concerned with making a canon in a nonEnglish native language environment or following the canon of
the native English environment. The period from the 1940s till
the 1960s was characterized by a strong ideological bias in selecting works for translation, thus establishing a convenient
canon within the canon which reflected the Soviet taste and vision of British literature and was suspicious of modernist fiction.
Subsequently, however, for various reasons (in particular due to
more adequate academic training), publishers have encouraged
the production of translations. Consequently, the publishing
business has broadened its scope (although annual government
quotas on the number of books from different foreign languages
were maintained for a while), and has indeed developed beyond
the rigid and narrowly-focused conventional university literature
curriculum. The latter continues to ignore “popular” culture, for
instance, and in the past publishers also used to ignore such
genre/category novels (except for lucrative crime and mystery
and science fiction) – which produced, in the absence of copiers,
secret lending libraries of romance. Currently, literature pro100
grammes offer students limited opportunities to become familiar
with authors outside the canonical few, especially since they are
discouraged from reading genre/category fiction. All these factors have impinged upon the development of the publishing industry in relation to translations. The expanding scope and depth
of this area is because book publishers have taken the initiative,
since even university professors are totally unfamiliar with all
new trends. Significantly, it is mostly former students of English
who are now into translation and publishing.
Let me conclude these reflections on the current condition of
English literary studies in Bulgaria on a note of looking back. In
doing this I take my cue from Ludmilla Kostova’s paper, which
appears in this volume.
Marco Mincoff’s History of English Literature (1970) has
played a dominant role in the development of English Studies in
Bulgaria. It evolved out of a course of lectures, as required by the
authorities of the day, delivered by Bulgaria’s most eminent professor of English. Prior to the formal publication in 1970, however, Mincoff’s lecture notes were circulated in mimeographed
copies. In the official publication some of the flavour of the lectures (references to contemporary events, culture, literature etc.)
was lost, since the author was primarily restricted by the pre-set
length requirements of the publishers. This was in the days of rationed paper supply, when possibly only the classics of Marxism
were not limited in their print runs. Yet, even then Mincoff’s History was seen as a corrective to and departure from the Soviet
style textbooks, such as Anikst’s History of English Literature
(1956), or the History of English Literature (1943-1956) of the
Academy of Science of the USSR. It was also regarded as superseding books in the area available in the Bulgarian language, such
as Mitov and Peshev’s Western European Literature from the
Great French Bourgeois Revolution to the Paris Commune
(1963). Mincoff’s book was regarded effectively as a work of national scholarship, a Bulgarian history of English literature. Its
publication, as required at the time, was preceded by a discussion
at the university in which some of the academic community were
critical of the content, finding it too academically “high brow.”
But its impact since publication has been unquestionable. The division of the History into two parts was merely technical, but was
101
subsequently reflected in university curricula and also inspired
shorter manuals published by colleagues. There are now more and
more imported British histories of English Literature available in
Bulgaria (mostly in libraries) and some scholars today are inclined
to criticise Mincoff’s book in comparison to these. Irrespective of
that though, I feel that the academic achievement of Mincoff’s
History of English Literature should be firmly recognised. This
achievement is considerably more noteworthy than that of recent
Bulgarian scholars of English Literature – who, with few exceptions, remain minor or even excluded from the broader Bulgarian
community of literary scholars, historians and theorists, even
when it comes to comparative studies. Among scholars of English
Literature from non-Anglophone countries the reputation of
Marco Mincoff is usually high and should serve as a beacon to
modern scholars.
Notes
1
The American College in Lovetch was set up in 1950. In 1958, the
two English classes which were moved to Sofia, were granted the
status of an English Language High School. The Plovdiv English Language High School was also founded in 1958.
Works Cited
Anikst, Alexandr A. Istoriya angliǐskoi literaturyi [History of
English Literature]. Moscow, 1956.
Istoriya angliǐskoi literaturyi.[History of English Literature],
vols. 1-3. Moscow–Leningrad. Academy of Science of
USSR Publishers, 1943-1958.
Mincoff, Marco. History of English Literature, Part I and II.
Sofia: Naouka i izkoustvo, 1970.
Mitov, Dimitar and Alexandar Peshev. Zapadnoevropeiskata
literatura ot velikata frenska burzhoazna revoljutsiya do
Parizhkata komuna. [West-European Literature from the
Great French Bourgeois Revolution to the Paris Commune]
4th edition. Sofia: Naouka i izkoustvo, 1963.
102
5
On Restructuring Survey Courses in the
BA Literature Curriculum in Bulgaria:
A Contemporary Perspective
Lubomir Terziev
This paper presents my perspective, based on my professional
experience and observations, of some current academic attitudes
to higher education in Bulgaria. I also suggest possible lines of
reorganization in the curriculum of the survey literary courses at
Sofia University’s English Department.
The need for modifications in a model based on the systematic and gradual accumulation of erudite knowledge is dictated
by the changing requirements of our students in the conditions
of a market economy. Sofia University, which is still widely
recognized as the premier university of this country, is slowly
but steadily losing big chunks of its cultural capital as a result of
shifting attitudes to the value of academic knowledge. So we,
teachers of literature, occupying a space beyond obviously
pragmatic agendas, can no longer sustain the supercilious assumption that the market value of our philological erudition
should be taken for granted.
Let me first try to account for the conservative drive, which I
find to be quite pronounced among Bulgarian teachers and academics. In a recent article, published in one of Bulgaria’s most influential cultural weeklies, Kultura, a leading education expert gives the
following diagnosis of the predicament of Bulgarian education:
The problem is that there are no personalities in our schools
who could forge horizontal bonds with their peers, tolerate
difference, ... form groups and teams, and make up an environment of ‘intelligent togetherness’. This goal is not on our
agenda because we have all been brought up to believe in the
hierarchical paradigm in which progress is proportionate to
one’s status ... (Petrov 2006)
103
As a matter of fact, the problem seems rooted in the prevalence
of a regressive narrative about the loss of an overwhelmingly
good standard of education which was established in the days of
socialism. The socialist model of education, which is to a large
extent the model to this day, would value versatility at the expense of specialization. At high school level, students had to
plod their way through intricate math equations, inscrutable
chemical formulae, and detailed historical lessons. Top grades in
most subjects were vital because the average grade across all
subjects was an important part of the criteria for admission to
universities. According to the popular myth, this educational
system fostering erudition, combined with our unique national
genes, has made of us one of the most intelligent nations in the
world. With the advent of democracy and globalization, a climate of laxity and indolence has set in, which has led to the deterioration of educational standards.
Against this backdrop, universities, and philological departments in particular, would be seen as the last resort of erudition.
As a matter of fact, this elitist attitude is largely reflected in the
patterns of admission to university. Our students sit highly competitive and difficult admission tests, for which, in most cases,
their high school teachers are unfit to prepare them. Actually the
gap between the average level of competence attained by school
leavers and the levels required at the doors to the University
could be seen as a desperate attempt on the part of academia to
batten on remnants of former glory.
As far as our English department is concerned, the same attitude is reflected in the preservation of the old structure of our
introductory Literature courses. Based on a purely chronological principle, our survey of English literature starts with Langland’s Piers Plowman and ends with Fowles’s The French
Lieutenant’s Woman. The curriculum is divided into three
separate courses covering Medieval and Renaissance Literature, 18th century and Romanticism, and the Victorian period to
the present day. Each of these courses spans over 30 weeks (2
semesters) and students are exposed to 30 hours of lectures and
60 hours of seminars. As most canonical figures are included
in the exam questionnaire, we find ourselves trotting through
voluminous texts like Tom Jones and Pamela. What aggravates
104
matters is that this ambitious agenda is pursued in the context
of several parallel compulsory modules in linguistics and a
number of demanding language courses.
Such a monumentally extensive model of introducing literature to undergraduates has its upsides, of course. The meaningful
rationale behind it could be that during the initial stages of literary
education a rigorously logical framework of literary tendencies
and intellectual paradigms needs to be built up in the students’
minds. A looser structure might well bring about confusion and
serve as an off-putting factor. Any excessive equivocation at this
stage might well trigger defensive responses. A narrower scope
might well leave students unprepared for further stages of literary
education. Moreover, Bulgarian schools bequeath us students
trained, when it comes to literature, in one of two equally problematic traditions of performance: the reproductive and the impressionistic. The former expects students to recycle an inflated
critical jargon that remains essentially incomprehensible and alien
to them. Ironically, most of these quasi-professional analyses of
literary works are written by university teachers. The other tradition draws upon many school teachers’ expectations that their students should demonstrate originality of thought and expression,
albeit unearned. The criteria of assessment are, of course, rather
vague. As my daughter’s Bulgarian teacher told me, she expected
fresh metaphors and that the essay should catch her imagination.
With such a legacy, it seems natural that most students end up
ignorant about major tendencies in the history of literature. Therefore, the systematic chronological survey of literary history seems
a reasonable and inevitable option at university level.
There seem to be, however, a few pitfalls about such a curriculum. First of all, the very chronological philosophy of the
courses presupposes a strong focus on the historical context.
This, as Ben Knights suggests, might leave us without much
time “to make significant statements about texts” (Knights and
Thurgar-Dawson 2006: 13). The teacher might well end up
trapped in the vocabulary and concerns of surrogate historicist
discourses without ever looking into the rhetorical texture of the
literary medium.
Secondly, the culture of unequivocal statements of the sort
“Neo-classicists cherish reason whereas the Romantics cherish
105
sentiment” might create the fallacious impression that erudition
amounts to a collection of pigeonholed assertions. Despite our
hope that this dependence on reductionism and simplification
will be overcome at later stages of literary education, this is often not the case. Actually, in our so called state exams, which
students sit at the end of their fourth year of study, a significant
proportion of the responses amount to biographical sketches or
statements about a writer’s belonging to a particular tradition.
Thirdly, a tightly packed chronological curriculum very often
makes for monologue-based teaching. From the students’ perspective, they are overwhelmed with the sheer amount of required
reading and resist by failing to read, which makes dialogue in the
classroom unthinkable. From the teacher’s perspective, there is so
much contextual information to convey that one often finds oneself reeling it all off, facing a silent audience of scribbling students. I think of myself as a student-oriented teacher but when I
teach my Romanticism course I seem to answer part of the description in the Teaching Quality Assessment Report, which Ben
Knights mentions in his paper. In some of my seminars “students
are given too few opportunities to contribute.”1 Even more importantly, this hectic rhythm of assessment-oriented teaching is not
conducive to the patience and time one needs to elicit responses
from the more introverted students. Thus, usually the most outgoing and articulate would speak, which could easily create distorted
opinions about intellectual capacity. Interestingly, in such an environment, even students’ presentations often fail to displace the
teacher from his centre stage position of authority. I wonder if any
teacher is fond of those moments when a student is giving a presentation and the rest, instead of listening or asking questions, wait
for your grunts of approval, which are a sign for them that they
need to put their pens down to paper.
I envisage two directions of possible modification: (a) a considerable reduction of survey course syllabi; (b) more emphasis
on student-oriented courses which tap on students’ creativity or
attract students’ attention through a symbiosis between literature
and more pragmatic disciplines such as language teaching or
translation. Of course, there is no way we can do without introductory courses. They form, in a sense, the backbone of the B.A.
curriculum. What I suggest is a more balanced approach to dif106
ferent models of acquiring knowledge and skills through the
study of literature.
In what follows I will have enough space to describe briefly
the benefits of an elective Creative Writing course I launched a
few months ago together with a colleague. It was a one-semester
course (30 hours) meant for our fourth-year students. Fifteen
students signed up, the minimum for an elective being six.
The project has in effect altered many of my theoretical presuppositions about teaching Literature. I approached the endeavour with a number of misgivings: the fuzziness of the concept of creativity and the risk that the whole thing might easily
degenerate into a “confidence” course. Since we are all sensitive
when it comes to discussing our own work, even more so when
we consider it a product of our creative mind, the teacher might
all too easily opt for what I would call the pretty-muchanything-goes option. In other words, a facilely positive atmosphere might substitute for genuine critical thinking. These fears
have been dispelled since it turned out that our students derived
pleasure from critically reviewing both their peers’ performance
and their teachers’ opinions. Here are some of what I consider
the strengths of the course:
(1) It develops the ability to overcome one’s vanity or shyness, to take criticism, and respond coherently to it. Students receive our detailed reviews of their own and their
peers’ texts and are invited to make motivated comments. This teaches them, among other things, to refrain
from sweeping generalizations and ad hominem attacks.
(2) Students learn to produce critical statements beyond the
level of pure intuition. At the same time, they are allowed some scope for intuitive liberties. Thus, the pretheoretical intuitive urge could be mildly suppressed or
guided without being chastised.
(3) Students find themselves in an atmosphere where they
care and are cared for. The fact that their own texts are at
stake makes for a level of involvement that could hardly
be achieved in conventional survey courses.
(4) One of the most withdrawn students on my Romanticism
course has proved a most talented writer and an articu107
late critic. In other words, here I see a different, I should
say, fairer, distribution of the power of voice.
(5) This course seems to make possible what I would call a
random access approach to acquiring erudition. By following up on references that crop up in our reviews or in
the course of the discussion students develop an interest
in a number of theoretical concepts and literary texts.
Our email boxes are cluttered with messages inviting us
to talk about the objective correlative, Camus’
L’Etranger or Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury.
In conclusion, I want to say that no matter how good the
format of our courses might be, what matters most is who walks
into the classroom. Unfortunately, in Bulgaria the teaching profession is grossly underestimated and underpaid. If in England
students have to work part time in order to make it through university, in Bulgaria both teachers and students work part time in
order to teach and study. It is clear that the economic situation in
this country will not change for the better any time soon. However, the teaching profession could be given an institutional
boost. What we need badly is a well designed system of teaching
quality assessment. It is true that the mostly oral performance of
a teacher is more difficult to assess than the written performance
of a researcher. But it is common knowledge that the most prolific researcher is not necessarily the best teacher.
Notes
1
The quotation from the Teaching Quality Assessment Report is extracted from a plenary talk that Ben Knights gave at a British Council
Video Conference in 2006.
Works Cited
Petrov, Rumen. “Internet? Predi tova e ‘inteligentnata zaednost’”. [“The Internet? ‘Intelligent Togetherness’ Should
Come First”] Kultura Weekly, 31st January 2006.
Knights, Ben and Chris Thurgar-Dawson. Active Reading Transformative Writing in Literary Studies. London: Continuum,
2006.
108
6
English – One Discipline or Many?
An Introductory Discussion
Ann Hewings
For those educated in an Anglophone country the study of English may invoke memories such as Shakespeare, modern drama,
or learning to spell and punctuate. For those in non-Anglophone
countries, English may connote learning the language, learning
about English-dominant countries, cultures and politics, or reading and studying English literature. What is meant by English or
English Studies is clearly not straightforward, stable, or universal. What exactly is English as a discipline, particularly in higher
education (HE) contexts?
One way of considering this is to focus on disciplinarity
from an applied linguistics perspective. From within English
Studies, as broadly conceived in the United Kingdom, the subdiscipline of applied linguistics has focused on disciplinarity as
it relates to writing in the academy. It has developed an array of
methods drawing on ethnography (Drury 2001, Lea and Street
1998, Swales 1998), discourse analysis (Coffin 2006, Hewings
and North 2006, MacDonald 1994, Samraj 2008, Wignell et al
1989) and corpus analysis (Harwood 2005, Hyland 1999,
Thompson and Tribble 2001) for examining disciplinary norms.
Attention has been given especially to the epistemology of disciplines, what counts as knowledge in a discipline, and how this
is manifest in texts written by students and academics: what
counts as evidence for claims; what are valid research questions
and goals; how the existing literature is drawn on and cited; and
how texts are structured. The purpose of much of this research
has been to help writers, both non-native speakers of English
(NNS) and native English speakers (NS) to write in ways valued
within their discipline (Bazerman 1988, Becher 1989, Charles
2006, Harwood 2005, Hewings 2004, Hewings and North 2006,
Hyland 2000, MacDonald 1994, North 2005, Samraj 2008,
109
Swales 1990). For academics, this may result in greater success
in getting work published; for students, it may help in understanding the expectations of their discipline at a practical level,
but also implicitly at an epistemological level (Lea and Street
1999). How the members of a disciplinary community write the
genres of their discipline both reflects and constructs the discipline. Through the analysis of writing, the significance of disciplinarity has become more apparent.
Acknowledging that academic writing is contextually bound
not just by genre, but by disciplines and sub-disciplines has resulted in analysis of student and professional academic writing
initially in the sciences, but latterly covering other academic
fields as well. English as a discipline, rather than a language, has
had relatively little attention (exceptions include Afros and
Schryer 2009, MacDonald 1994). Indeed, delimiting “English”
or “English Studies” is itself problematic:
Historically, the field of English Studies has included a
number of sub-disciplines including the study of Modern
Literature, English Language, Medieval Literature, Performance Studies, Critical Theory and Creative Writing. (HEA
English Subject Centre1 Website)
When different geographical, historical, political and institutional
perspectives are added, English Studies becomes even less clearly
defined. I do not propose here to analyse the writings of students or
scholars engaged in English Studies, but rather focus on the scope
of the discipline as encountered in HE institutions predominantly in
England, but bringing in examples from other geographical and
educational contexts. I look in particular at breadth of coverage
across three areas of current interest in the United Kingdom: literature, language and creative writing. The question of whether this
examination will uncover one discipline or many has implications
for scholarly exchange and for pedagogy.
Disciplinary construction
Charles Bazerman’s well-known work on the experimental article in science began with his perception of the problem of teaching writing to university students if teachers do not know what
constitutes an appropriate text in their students’ discipline (Baz110
erman 1988). This highlights the discipline as a significant entity
comprising “both a body of ideas and body of people,” an interplay of the cognitive and the communal (Becher and Huber
1990: 235). Becher’s work (1987) on categorising disciplines
within universities led to a four-way classification: Pure Sciences, Humanities, Technologies, and Applied Social Sciences.
English does not fit neatly into any of these groups. The study of
literature and creative writing would fall within Humanities
while applied linguistics and English language would probably
be included within Applied Social Sciences. Students writing an
English literature essay may approach their task with a humanities-based orientation to the task – concerned with particulars,
qualities, complications, and interpretation. In contrast, the more
social scientific approach where the search for patterns and evidence to support generalisations is common would be more
usual in English language assignments.
The significance of disciplinarity to students and their writing practices has been the subject of a number of studies. At a
practical level, students will observe that there are differences in,
for example, referencing practices. But the differences are more
subtle and significant than just surface features. Berkenkotter et
al’s (1991) study of a graduate student during the early years of
his doctoral study in Rhetoric revealed aspects of a disciplinebased socialisation process evident in his writings. They generalised their findings as follows:
Graduate students are initiated into the research community
through the reading and writing they do, through instruction
in research methodology, and through interaction with faculty and with their peers. A major part of this initiation process is learning how to use appropriate written linguistic conventions for communicating through disciplinary forums.
(Berkenkotter et al 1991: 191)
A study of undergraduate students undertaking a history of science course found that those students who had previously taken
arts-based courses such as English, History, and Philosophy
achieved significantly better marks than students who had previously taken science-based courses (North 2005). This reflected
the arts/humanities disciplinary orientation of the course. North
concluded that even when writing essays on the same topics,
111
aspects of students’ writing “reflected the views of knowledge
typical of their disciplinary background” (449). Previous disciplinary experience and knowledge, then, can be either an advantage or a disadvantage depending upon how closely it fits with a
student’s present study. This finding and other similar findings
(Hewings 2004, Lea and Street 1998) have significance for students undertaking interdisciplinary study or for those in disciplines which embody a variety of epistemological models such
as English language and English literature.
Attention to disciplinarity focuses attention on the social as
well as the intellectual in academic knowledge construction.
While disciplinary norms and traditions have a socio-historical
basis, they also have a current regulatory function. What counts
as knowledge, the epistemology of a discipline, is “policed” by
disciplinary insiders, such as journal editors and reviewers at a
research level, and HE teachers and their departments at a pedagogical level. Added to that are university management structures and quasi-governmental institutions such as, in England,
research councils and the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher
Education (QAA), the body responsible for creating benchmark
statements for major higher education discipline areas. For researchers outside Anglophone countries, becoming an insider
within the discipline can also be affected by factors such as geography and language. Knowledge of the current interests of the
discipline may depend on an ability to travel to conferences, access specific libraries, collect relevant data, and publish in highstatus international journals. All these are likely to be more difficult for researchers in certain parts of the world. In addition,
prestigious publications are likely to require writing in a foreign
language – English (Lillis et al, forthcoming). The discipline
itself is therefore influenced more strongly by those in what
have come to be known as Anglophone-centre countries.
The discipline of English in England
English is a versatile academic discipline characterised by
the rigorous and critical study of literature and language. It is
concerned with the production, reception and interpretation
of written texts, both literary and non-literary; and with the
nature, history and potential of the English language. The
112
study of English develops a flexible and responsive openness
of mind, conceptual sophistication in argument, and the ability to engage in dialogue with past and present cultures and
values. The subject also has a special role in sustaining in the
general community a constantly renewed knowledge and
critical appreciation of the literature of the past and of other
cultural forms. (QAA 2007)
This description of English by the QAA highlights the study of
both literature and language as integral to the discipline. However,
an examination of some of the degree programmes in English in
universities in English-speaking countries illustrates a more varied
picture. The curricula in some of the longer-established universities reveal a strong focus on literary studies and therefore a lesser
role for English language or creative writing. In the English degree at the University of Cambridge, for example, the emphasis is
on literature written in English, and indeed predominantly from
the British Isles. A comparative dimension is possible through the
study of literature in a European language or Old English. English
language only appears as one of the optional courses and even
then it is the study of literary uses of the English language. Creative writing is accepted for assessment purposes but is not actively
taught. The University of Oxford has a degree nominally called
“English Language and Literature,” but again the emphasis is on
literature written in English. In the second year there is one compulsory course2 on English language and there is currently discussion about making this optional. Trinity College in Dublin, despite
having a degree called “English Studies,” is entirely literature focused. Similarly, Yale University's web description of their “English Language and Literature” degree makes no mention of language. Harvard University, too, focuses on literature. However,
Yale and Harvard also include creative writing within their English departments.
Of interest is the contrast between the older, more established universities and a range of others. The English School at
Oxford was founded in 1894, partly as a response to a number of
social and cultural changes within society. The industrial revolution needed and created many more people able to read. Mechanics and Miners Institutes provided lectures and libraries for
this growing group. Fears of profound social unrest and revolu113
tion led some to a focus on a shared national literary heritage in
pursuit of shared national goals (see Baron 2005). The 1870 and
subsequent Education Acts created schooling for all and consequently a greater need for teachers trained in English. English at
Oxford started with a strong language or philology bias, but over
the years the influence of institutions such as the Bodleian Library and the Oxford English dictionary has led to a textual and
a historical focus to English study at Oxford. Cambridge lays
claim to distinctiveness largely on the grounds of its innovation
at the beginning of the 20th century. Cambridge refers to the
foundation of the degree in 1919 and the fact that it was the first:
to encourage the study of English Literature up to the present day and the first to approach English literature from a
“literary” point of view, rather than as a manifestation of the
history of the language. (University of Cambridge, Faculty
of English website)
Judgements about literary merit associated with the Cambridge
approach to literature have been influential in designating a literary canon. It has also been associated with the ideas of F. R.
Leavis that literature can be a civilising force (Young 2008: 25).
Arguably, this is what the final sentence of the QAA description
of English, given above, draws upon.
The focus on literature has been highly influential and the
various features of English study at both Oxford and Cambridge
are integrated in many degree programmes elsewhere. However,
the breadth of the discipline of English is clearly evident in programmes at other universities. Different forces have affected
these institutions, not least the competition for students. The expansion of HE has seen a number of waves, including vocational
HE institutions, polytechnics (put on the same footing as more
academically-focused universities in 1992) and very recently the
teaching of English within vocational degrees at Further Education Colleges, institutions not traditionally involved in degreelevel study. The polytechnics, now often referred to as the
“new” universities, had been perceived as less prestigious and
they have therefore had to compete hard to attract students. They
have been aided by government targets and funding to widen
access to students from a broader socio-economic base. The National Committee of Enquiry into Higher Education (1997) rec114
ommended that in order to achieve access to HE from across the
socio-economic spectrum, government money should be targeted at those institutions with a strong, widening participation
record. To increase participation, these institutions have had to
consider curricula that will be attractive to students as well as
fulfil the necessary criteria for HE study.
In order to investigate the disciplinary nature of English Studies
across a wider range of institutions, the degrees offered under the
umbrella of English at ten universities or colleges in the West Midlands region,3 together with the Open University, a distance teaching institution with courses available both nationally and internationally, were examined. It was apparent that these institutions
showed a much more varied approach to what is included within
the ambit of English Studies than that found in the oldest universities. In five of the eleven it is possible to combine language and
literature. In two, English language is the main focus and in four,
literature is the main focus. In all nine universities where literature
is a major component, creative writing is also foregrounded. Some
universities also emphasise the study of American literature alongside British literature, while in three, literature translated into English was also studied. Film, theatre and drama studies were also integrated into a number of the degrees.
The diversity within English programmes fits well with the
description of English as a discipline given by the UK government’s QAA:
In its intellectual character and academic practice, HE English is a continually evolving discipline... It includes the
study of the literatures from the Anglophone world. In addition to the study of literature and language, the subject can
also incorporate comparative literature and literature in
translation, drama, creative writing, film, and the study of
non-literary texts. (QAA 2007)
However, this benchmark statement is not the only one relevant
to English Studies. Set alongside benchmark statements for English are benchmark statements for linguistics, which are of particular significance to English language study. The division of
English language across two Subject Centres, English and Linguistics, presents “the subsidiary character of English language
on an official level” and its subsequent lack of an official iden115
tity (Baxter and Santos 2009: 3). Despite this, English language
has been growing within university English departments in recent years. This, alongside “the exponential growth of creative
writing courses,” indicates the varied curricula available (Halcrow Group 2003). For example, in a 2003 Survey of the English
Curriculum and Teaching in UK Higher Education of the 51
English departments offering literary studies, 29 were also offering language studies (Halcrow Group 3). The Survey also asked
institutions about core and optional courses and this gives another perspective on English Studies. 53 institutions responded
from the 135 offering English programmes in the UK. The overview was summarised as:
‘Late Twentieth Century and Contemporary’ and ‘Modernist’ are the most widely available options, with ‘Renaissance’ coming third. ‘Critical/Literary theory’ is the most
widely taught compulsory course, with ‘General Linguistics’
in second place. Generally speaking, provision of periodbased courses outweighs that of regionally-based. Amongst
‘global’ English, Irish literature is the most widely taught.
(Halcrow Group 70)
The Survey also asked institutions how important they thought it
was to produce graduates with specific subject knowledge. Of
interest were the subject areas considered less key which included aspects of English language to do with linguistic terminology, history of the English language, and the practice of creative writing (Halcrow Group 75).
As well as internal UK factors affecting English Studies curricula, international frameworks and students have also been
significant. UK universities are keen for academic and financial
reasons to attract international students. Within Europe, this
means that degree programmes have undergone a measure of
harmonisation in terms of length of study, quality assurance
mechanisms, and transferability of credit. More generally, the
rise of English as a global language (Graddol 2006) and particularly as an academic lingua franca has seen growing interest in
the language, and several UK universities combine English,
modern foreign languages and teaching English courses into a
single degree. Outside Anglophone countries, English has expanded in some countries from the study of language and litera116
ture into the language of instruction for other curriculum areas.
There is a trend towards offering university courses taught
through the medium of English. This allows universities in, for
example, the Netherlands to attract a range of students from outside Europe; students who are likely to have a knowledge of
English but not of Dutch. For some, the role of English is seen
as benign or even as a lingua franca enabling greater integration
in a multilingual Europe (Leung and Jenkins 2006). For others,
the use of English is considered in relation to the downgrading
of other languages and increasing power for multinational industries and institutions (Phillipson 2003).
The phenomenon of English as an international language is
possibly more clearly visible in English language courses which
include a sociolinguistic dimension. At the Open University, for
example, an introductory course on the English language includes a strong international focus. The role of English in the
world today is examined as both a historical, cultural, and a political process, and the role of education through the medium of
English is highlighted as a significant current process maintaining this position. Reflecting on English and its role in the world
is also accomplished through the study of literature in its historical and cultural context, and expression of the diversity of English, its literature and its role in the world, may also be accomplished through creative writing in English Studies programmes.
Other papers in this volume give insights into the curriculum
in Bulgaria and Romania. The picture that emerges of English
Studies in England is of a wide variety of choice available to
students. There are programmes of study which concentrate
purely on literature written in English, and programmes devoted
entirely to the English language. In addition, there are programmes which allow choice between and among the varied options associated with English Studies. Students studying literature are likely to study a range of periods and genres and may
study literature in translation. Critical approaches to literature
may be enhanced by the creative practice of writing. English
language has become increasingly popular; it can be studied as a
programme in its own right or as part of wider English Studies
programmes. Similarly, creative writing is sometimes a programme in its own right and sometimes integrated into English
117
Studies. While this richness and diversity is to be welcomed,
consideration needs to be given to the different disciplinary traditions embodied by literature, language and creative writing
study, and students supported as they move between them. The
diversity of traditions and expectations that underlie these different sub-disciplines within English Studies mean that for students writing across the whole range possible within English
Studies may be problematical. Nevertheless, it is the range and
diversity of approaches that is so attractive and academically
rich, a feature to be nurtured and allowed to enhance scholarly
endeavour and teaching within the discipline. The depth of
knowledge and understanding, the potential for crossfertilisation of ideas and methods of study are increased not by a
narrow disciplinary specification, but by embracing English
Studies and its sub-disciplines in all their variety.
Notes
1
The HEA or Higher Education Authority in the United Kingdom is
responsible for a number of Subject Centres which support teaching
across different discipline areas at university level. English Studies is
served by the English Subject Centre and also by the Language and
Linguistics and Area Studies Subject Centre.
2
The term “course” is used here to denote any discrete part of a degree
programme.
3
Aston University, University of Birmingham, Birmingham City University, Coventry University, Keele University, Newman University
College, Staffordshire University, University of Warwick, University
of Wolverhampton, and University of Worcester, as listed by the
Higher Education Academy English Subject Centre (2009)
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122
7
Global Englishes1
Joan Swann
Today, English is used by at least 750 million people, and
barely half of those speak it as a mother tongue. Some estimates have put that figure closer to 1 billion. Whatever the
total, English at the end of the twentieth century is more
widely scattered, more widely spoken and written, than any
other language has ever been. It has become the language of
the planet, the first truly global language. (McCrum et al
2002:9-10)
The teaching of English, wherever this occurs, needs to take account of its status as a global language. This has been a major
focus of attention in both popular and academic books on English, of which McCrum et al is just one example. However,
while McCrum et al refer to English in the singular, as “the language of the planet” (their italics), its use by such a huge range
of speakers would tend to highlight its diversity. English is used
by a variety of speakers, in a variety of contexts, for a variety of
purposes. It also takes a variety of forms, so much so that the
term “Englishes” is preferred by some researchers.
As recently as 20 years ago, the British linguist Randolph
Quirk could champion the cause of native speaker (British and
American) varieties of English, regarding local usages found
amongst educated speakers in countries such as India and Nigeria as a “locally-acquired deviation from the standard language”
(Quirk 1990: 8). However, Quirk was writing in the context of,
and partly in opposition to, a spate of studies that testified to increasing academic interest in the types of language use he condemned. Empirical studies of “world Englishes” have documented and described varieties of English resulting from the
global spread of English – varieties spoken by both native and
non-native speakers. Such work has also played a political or
ideological role in recognising the validity of non-native varie123
ties, rather than seeing these as “deviations.” Other, more critical
research has focused explicitly on the politics of the spread of
English, from historical colonial activity to contemporary practices associated with “linguistic imperialism,” exploring the interests these serve and their effects on other languages and their
speakers. More recently, research has focused on possibilities
for the development of a democratic English as a lingua franca;
and on how, as a global language, English is intricately embedded in processes of globalisation.
In this chapter I look at these different ways of accounting
for “global Englishes.” I argue that they have implications for
the teaching of English language and for English as an academic
subject. As a prelude, I include a case study of English in Bulgaria, published in the journal World Englishes2.
Laurie O’Reilly (1998) discusses the contemporary position
of English in Bulgaria in terms of a “sibling rivalry” between the
cultures of “British” and “American” English, the two canonical
native speaker varieties that have been used internationally as
norms for teaching and learning. O’Reilly argues that British
and American English language teaching have different recent
histories in Bulgaria, with the UK coming to be seen as the “curator” of a linguistic and literary institution and US teaching associated with science, technology and business. The influence of
British English language teaching spans several decades. During
the cold war, in collaboration with Bulgarian officials, UK
teachers were placed in English medium schools throughout
Bulgaria, at which many future Bulgarian diplomats were educated. This continued during the 1990s, with the British role expanding to include teacher education and consultancy, mainly
via the British Council. The US, on the other hand, absent during the cold war, became more influential during the 1990s. In
addition to language teaching and teacher education, the US
supported various business initiatives, and education programmes increasingly linked English language teaching with
courses in business and technology.
While UK and US language teaching initiatives have to
some extent carved out different spaces and spheres of influence, there is still some rivalry between them. O’Reilly argues
that educational developments are also mediated by Bulgarian
124
officials, variously encouraging and regulating UK and US involvement in education. The relationship between these three
players – Bulgaria, the UK and the US – is conceptualised as a
“triangle of power” through which the development of language
cultures is negotiated.
O’Reilly points to a degree of tension in the relationship of
many Bulgarians with the English language – a desire to learn
English along with an unwillingness to accept “all aspects of the
agendas” associated with UK and US involvement in education
(O’Reilly 1998: 80). Interestingly, O’Reilly also points to signs
of an emerging language culture of Bulgarian English, although
this receives only limited discussion.
This case study of English in Bulgarian education draws on
two of the research areas mentioned above that have sought to
document and understand the position of English as a global
language: linguistic imperialism (in documenting the influence
of UK and US English language teaching on Bulgarian educational practice); and world Englishes (in paying attention to the
roles of different Englishes, including the potential of a local
Bulgarian English). It also nods towards ideas associated with
English and globalisation (in its acknowledgement of the complexity of the relations between players in the field). Below I
shall say a little more about these, as well as the additional research area of English as a lingua franca, not addressed here.
These approaches to global Englishes foreground different aspects of the relationship between varieties of English – dominant
native-speaker varieties and non-native varieties; and between
English and other languages. Taken together, they raise issues
about English as a language of education, and English as a subject, wherever this is taught.
World Englishes
One of the leading exponents of the idea of world Englishes is
the Indian linguist Braj Kachru. Kachru famously constructed a
“three circles” model in order to account systematically for the
position of English in different parts of the world – see Figure 1.
125
Inner circle (US, UK,
Australia etc) – norm
providing
Outer circle (India,
Nigeria, Philippines etc)
– norm developing
Expanding circle (Holland,
Italy, Japan, Bulgaria etc) –
norm dependent
Figure 1: Kachru”s “Three circles” of English:
based on Kachru (1982)
The three circles in Figure 1 represent different sets of varieties
of English and their associated contexts of use. The “inner circle” refers to native speaker varieties in countries such as the US
and the UK that are seen as norm providing. Inner circle Englishes have developed standardised varieties, which may be oriented to by speakers of English as a second or foreign language,
and used as models in teaching and learning. The “outer circle”
refers to “second language” varieties in countries such as India
and Nigeria, developed under British (or US) colonialism. English often has an institutional status in such contexts, used in
education, government, commerce, the media etc. Kachru sees
these as “norm-developing” – i.e. as developing their own independent norms. The “expanding circle” refers to contexts in
which English is seen as a “foreign language,” taught as a subject in schools, e.g. in continental European countries, but without the same institutional status as in outer circle contexts. Expanding circle varieties are seen as “norm-dependent” – as not
having their own norms, but depending on external norms such
as British or American English.
A world Englishes perspective recognises the validity of varieties such as Indian English, seeing these as systematic and
rule governed, as in the following account from S.K. Verma:
126
Indian English is a self-contained system and follows its
own set of rules. This system is closely related to the core
grammar of English English. Its Indianness lies in the fact
that, within the overall general framework of the systems of
English English, it displays certain phonological, lexicosemantic, and also syntactic features. In terms of linguistic
efficiency, these patterns are as good as any other. They are
not corrupt, but rather different forms of the same language.
(Verma 1982: 180)
The quotation from Verma comes from a paper on “Swadeshi
English,” itself a powerful term associated with anti-colonialism
and with Gandhian notions of self-sufficiency and a rejection of
foreign goods and ideas.
Traditionally, research from within a world Englishes perspective has focussed on the study of outer circle varieties such
as Indian English, but more recently attention has turned to the
expanding circle, including Europe in the context of globalisation, business and trade – an emphasis evident in journals such
as World Englishes and English Today.
Limitations of the world Englishes perspective, and particularly the “three circles” model, are that this is both over-rigid
and over-simplified, failing to account for variation within national varieties such as Indian English and for more complex
patterns of language use both within and across the circles –
though to some extent this is addressed in more recent work. It is
also seen as uncritical, paying insufficient attention to inequalities of power between languages and their speakers (in this last
case, for instance, by Phillipson 2008).
Linguistic Imperialism
The spread of English has long been associated with sociolinguistic processes of language shift (where particular speech
communities fail to maintain their language in the face of competition from a more powerful language – cf Fishman 1964) and
language death. The idea of linguistic imperialism, developed by
Robert Phillipson, highlights issues of power and inequality and
attempts to deal critically and systematically with the global
dominance of English, and particularly the part played in this by
English language teaching. Phillipson’s argument is that the
127
spread of English is part of an imperialist project, bound up with
structural and cultural inequalities. He offers the following as a
working definition of linguistic imperialism:
the dominance of English is asserted and maintained by the
establishment and continuous reconstitution of structural
and cultural inequalities between English and other languages. (Phillipson 1992: 47)
Here “structural” refers to material properties. It would include
the ELT industry, institutions such as the British Council and
financial allocations such as foreign aid packages. “Cultural”
refers to immaterial or ideological properties such as attitudes
and pedagogical principles. For Phillipson, the global spread of
English is embedded in such processes, and it furthers the interests of political, economic and cultural elites, both intranationally and internationally.
Linguistic imperialism is part of a broader process of linguicism, a term coined earlier by Phillipson and Tove SkutnabbKangas by analogy with terms such as racism and sexism. Linguicism refers to:
Ideologies, structures, and practices which are used to legitimate, effectuate, and reproduce an unequal division of
power and resources, (both material and immaterial) between groups which are defined on the basis of language.
(Phillipson 1992: 47)
In a more recent paper focussing on English in Europe Phillipson
(2008) sees English as a threat to other European languages and
cultures. In a discussion of “the Englishization of Europe,” for
instance, he points to discrepancies between the formal equality
between EU languages and a de facto linguistic hierarchy with
English at the top. For Phillipson, the dominance of English in the
EU as well as internationally is bound up with US hegemony.
In its emphasis on general patterns of inequality, the idea of
linguistic imperialism plays down the agency of speakers, including speakers of other languages who choose to take up English. Similarly, it does not attend to the local and potentially
complex sets of factors that, in any context, may motivate
speaker choices.
128
English as a lingua franca
An alternative position is reflected in a developing research field
that focuses on English as a lingua franca (often referred to under the acronym ELF). Jennifer Jenkins comments on this field:
English is the international language at present, so rather
than argue in terms of the past why this should not be, I prefer to look ahead to ways in which we can make the language more cross-culturally democratic, under the “ownership” ... of all who use it for communication, regardless of
who or where they are. (Jenkins, 2000: 4)
Jenkins, here, does not ignore the inequalities that have been a
major focus of researchers such as Phillipson. Her approach,
however, may be characterised as liberal rather than critical,
seeking to extend the ownership of English to a wider range of
people. Jenkins appeals to an idea of English as a lingua franca
that may be added to a speaker’s own variety. This would not,
self-evidently, be based on native-speaker norms. Jenkins argues
further that, along with this international lingua franca variety,
all speakers (native and non-native) need communicative flexibility to accommodate to a plurality of norms (see also discussion in Jenkins 2007, and Seidlhofer 2004).
Phillipson’s account of English in Europe, referred to above,
includes a critique of the application of “lingua franca” to the
English language. Phillipson sees this as invidious, given that
English is a first language for some people and a foreign language
for others, leading necessarily to asymmetrical communication.
He also sees the term as misleading if it is meant to suggest the
language is “neutral” and disconnected from culture. More specifically on the work of Jenkins and Seidlhofer, he comments:
Such work hopes to trigger a paradigm change, a decoupling
from the norms that currently determine the power of English. While sympathising with the goal of contributing to criteria for more equality in communication, I consider that any
empirical re-standardization of English is at several removes
from the forces that currently propel English forward. (Phillipson 2008: 262)
129
The idea of ELF has also been critiqued from a world Englishes perspective. Margie Berns (2009) notes that ELF is designed to recognise the validity of the English used at an international level by non-native speakers, according this equivalent
status to more established varieties such as Nigerian English
(and according its users equivalent rights in determining norms
and standards of use). As such it is consistent with the principles
of world Englishes (Berns 2009: 192-3). However, whereas the
term “lingua franca” conventionally refers to a variety identified
by its use (a means of communication between speakers of different varieties), in ELF research it also refers to the forms said
to characterise such use: linguistic form and function are one
and the same construct. For Berns this calls into question its
theoretical validity.
One context in which English is seen to operate as a lingua
franca, and where a great deal of ELF research has been based,
is Europe. However, Berns comments that, amongst speakers in
Europe, English is used for different purposes, and not simply as
a lingua franca. She cites a number of studies carried out from a
world Englishes perspective that, she argues, have established
four main functions of English in Europe: instrumental (e.g. the
use of English as a medium across all levels of education – an
expanding role due to the increasing internationalisation of education); institutional (not as common as in countries such as India, but English is one of the official EU languages and is frequently a default language in meetings); interpersonal (social
contact between people of all ages and in all settings); and innovative (the exploitation of English in advertising, popular music,
blogs, chat rooms etc). Such evidence provides a relatively differentiated and nuanced picture of English language use that,
Berns argues, cannot be captured by the concept of “English as a
lingua franca.”
English and Globalisation
“Globalisation” has been discussed in relation to an increasing
level of interconnectedness between different parts of the world.
This is bound up with economic change, as processes of production and consumption increasingly operate on a global level
(with, for instance, companies employing workers and targeting
130
consumers in different national contexts); with technological
developments, which allow rapid communication across the
world so that time and space come to be seen as compressed;
and also with culture and identity, as cultural practices are disseminated across the world and national, social and personal
identities may be redefined in relation to larger global processes.
While globalisation is sometimes associated with increasing
homogeneity, this is not straightforwardly the case: for instance,
international companies may tailor products to different local
groups of consumers. Globalisation may also give rise to attempts to maintain a range of local practices and identities,
sometimes referred to as localisation. Language is embedded in
all these processes, and many studies have focused on changing
forms and uses of English, as well as changes in the status of the
language that are both a response and a contribution to globalisation/localisation.
Alastair Pennycook argues that a focus on globalisation
forces us to question approaches to the study of global Englishes
such as those discussed above:
These approaches to global English – whether linguistic imperialism and language rights, or world Englishes and English as a lingua franca, remain stuck within twentieth century
frameworks of languages and nations. The central concern
that the debates between these rival conceptualisations leave
uncontested is how we can understand diversity outside
those very frameworks that are part of the problem. Neither
a defence of national languages and cultures, nor a description of a core of English as a lingua franca, nor even a focus
on plural Englishes adequately addresses questions of diversity under new conditions of globalisation. (Pennycook
2010:121)
Pennycook seeks to understand the role of English critically, but
taking into account both “new forms of power, control and destruction” and “new forms of resistance, change, appropriation
and identity” (5-6). For instance, speakers of other languages
may resist English, or they may take it on in different ways, and
they may change it to make it suit their own ends. Rather than
focus simply on the global dominance of English researchers
need to understand these more complex processes.
131
An important concept drawn on by Pennycook (2007) is that
of transcultural flows. These include the flow of ideas, cultural
products, language routines etc – but they do not simply flow
from the core to the periphery, as might be assumed in Kachru’s
“three circles” model, or Phillipson’s model of “linguistic imperialism”. There are all sorts of cross-cutting flows, representing
more complex patterns of circulation.
An illustration may be provided by hip hop, studied by
Pennycook as well as by other researchers. While hip hop emanates from the US (although as a distinctly non-canonical practice), Pennycook argues that it may be taken up in different
ways, localised, and related to a range of other practices. For
instance, the quotation below comes from a Malaysian rap. It
represents an African American practice, but combined with local cultural references – here Muslim prayers at dawn, and local
food (Chinese and Indian) eaten at stalls for breakfast.
If I die tonight, what would I do on my last day
I know I’d wake early in the morn’ for crack of dawn’s last
pray
Then probably go for breakfast like I used to
Fried kuey teow FAM and roti canai at Ruja”s with my boo
(“If I die tonight”, featuring Liyana from 360°; cited Pennycook 2007: 3)
Note:
Kuey teow = fried flat noodles
Roti canai = Indian bread with canai or channa – chick
peas in spicy sauce
Ruja”s = local (café/outlet?)
Pennycook’s more dynamic model challenges static concepts of
“English,” of national varieties such as US or Indian English, of
power and of spheres of influence running uniquely from the
native-speaker core to the periphery, providing an alternative
focus on multidirectional flows, and the potential for the appropriation and reworking of English in specific local contexts of
use.
132
Review
The approaches discussed above have foregrounded different
linguistic phenomena as objects of research, but they also construct the English language itself in different ways, in opposition
to a traditional Quirkian reliance on native speaker standards and
norms, and in some respects in opposition to one another. English may be seen as:
• plural and diverse, where different Englishes – native and
non-native – are valid in their own terms, rather than nonnative (or nonstandard) varieties being seen as “deviations”;
• necessarily implicated in unequal relations with other languages and speakers; more systematically, as an aspect of
linguistic imperialism that supports US (and to a lesser extent UK) hegemony;
• providing the potential for a relatively neutral and democratised lingua franca;
• processual rather than a fixed entity, embedded in complex processes of globalisation and transcultural flows;
• or possibly a mix of more than one of these.
In addition to their theoretical and disciplinary interest, these
different constructions of English have implications for the English curriculum, wherever English is taught. They raise a number
of questions for those concerned to develop English as a subject.
For instance, which variety, or varieties, of English should serve
as a model (or models) for teaching and learning? Can/should
these vary in different teaching/learning contexts? How may
they be determined? How should the English language be conceptualised as an object of study? Does/should this vary in different teaching/learning contexts? How valid, and how valuable,
linguistically and/or symbolically, are constructs of expanding
circle Englishes such as “Bulgarian English”? How may students of English be helped to reflect on their own experiences
(motivations, values, beliefs) as English language users? The
study of English in different parts of the world is itself implicated in the global spread of English (both affected by and contributing to this). This suggests that answers to these questions
have political as well as pedagogical significance.
133
Notes
1
Ideas for this chapter derive, in part, from earlier work for a book on
developments in English language studies – see Maybin and Swann
(2010).
2
I am grateful to Ludmilla Kostova for referring me to this article.
Works Cited
Berns, Margie. “English as lingua franca and English in
Europe.” World Englishes 28: 2 (2009): 192-199.
Fishman, Joshua A. “Language maintenance and shift as fields
of inquiry.” Linguistics 9 (1961): 32-70.
Jenkins, Jennifer. English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and
Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Jenkins, Jennifer. The Phonology of English as an International
Language: New Models, New Norms, New Goals. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000.
Kachru, Braj, ed. The Other Tongue – English Across Cultures.
Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1982.
McCrum, Robert, Robert Macneil and William Cran. The Story
of English 3rd edn. London: Faber and Faber/BBC Books,
2002.
Maybin, Janet and Joan Swann, eds. The Routledge Companion
to English Language Studies. Abingdon, Oxon/New York:
Routledge, 2010.
O’Reilly, Laurie M. “English Language Cultures in Bulgaria: a
linguistic sibling rivalry?” World Englishes 17: 1 (1998):
71-84.
Pennycook, Alastair Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows.
London/New York. Routledge, 2007.
Pennycook, Alastair. “English and Globalization.” Maybin and
Swann eds., 2010. 113-121.
Phillipson, Robert. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
134
Phillipson, Robert. “Lingua franca or lingua frankensteinia?
English in European Integration and Globalisation.” World
Englishes 27: 2 (2008): 250–267.
Quirk, Randolf “Language varieties and standard language.”
English Today 6: 1 (1990): 3-10.
Seidlhofer, Barbara. “Research perspectives on teaching English
as a lingua franca.” Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 24
(2004): 209–39.
Verma, Shivendra K. “Swadeshi English: Form and Function.”
New Englishes. Ed. J.B. Pride. Rowley, Mass: Newbury
House, 1982.
135
Part II
Pedagogy, Practice and Policy
8
Tradition and Perspectives:
Teaching General Linguistics to First
Year Students of British and American
Studies at Sofia University
Alexandra Bagasheva
A very brief description
The Department of British and American Studies at Sofia University is a rare bird among the departments which comprise the
Faculty of Classical and Modern Philology. It is the only Department at which General Linguistics is taught in the target language – English. At the other departments General Linguistics is
taught in Bulgarian by lecturers from the Faculty of Slavic Studies.
The Department of English and American Studies was not
an exception until 1992. In that year the late Professor Andrey
Danchev, as deputy dean of the Faculty of Classical and Modern
Philology, approved the Department’s decision to break with the
long-established tradition. Since then General Linguistics has
been taught in English at this department, by members of the
department. This was not simply a structural change (selfcontainment of all subjects within the department) and entailed a
considerable reorientation in the content and principles of the
course. The reading material and the nature of the course were
drastically altered. Prior to that moment the course was based on
readings of Russian authors. The bulk of reading was in Russian
and Bulgarian. Works by Zvegintsev, Solntsev, Smirnitski,
Moskov and Duridanov were core readings in the curriculum.
The mandatory textbook used to be Linguistics: A University
Textbook, written by I. Duridanov and V. Georgiev and published in 1965 (second revised edition). The Anglo-Saxon linguistic tradition was virtually absent. At present, the students of
other philologies use as mandatory reading material Zhivko Bo139
jadzhiev’s textbook An Introduction to General Linguistics
(2002). The language of instruction remains Bulgarian, even
though the students come from a wide range of programmes,
such as Chinese, Turkic, Bulgarian, etc. studies.
With the change at the department of British and American
Studies, the course in General Linguistics was reoriented towards the structural European tradition with the main focus on
Saussure’s and Benveniste’s theories. With the new curriculum,
John Lyons, Francis Palmer and Stephen Ullman came to replace the Russian authors, though the overall theoretical cast of
the course remained structural. The language of instruction became English. For a number of years the two syllabi ran in parallel for administrative reasons. Students redoing the year used the
old Bulgarian syllabus and exam questionnaire while freshmen
relied solely on the new one. Reading linguistics in Russian was
considered an advantage. Bearing in mind that students still relied heavily on lecture notes, the changes in the reading list did
not affect the contents of the course drastically, at least in the
initial years. The standard classroom practice included three
graded presentations in each seminar from the third one onwards. Three students were expected to read pre-assigned texts
and present them to the group. This implied that only the students making presentations actually knew the pre-assigned text
in detail. This proved of very low efficacy and in the second
year of my teaching the course this classroom practice was
dropped.
I started teaching the course in General Linguistics in 2003.
For the first two years the course did not undergo significant
changes. The following sources were added to the core of the
reading list: Leech, Semantics (1985); V. Fromkin and Robert
Rodman, An Introduction to Language (1993); R. H. Robins,
General Linguistics: An Introductory Survey (1989); D. Crystal,
Linguistics (1995); and R. Trask, Language Change (1994). As
most of the books are single copies in the resource centre, the
basic procedure was for students to read photocopied parts of the
textbooks focused on different topics. The students used a bound
volume of photocopies with chapters from different textbooks
and supplementary materials. It was extremely difficult for students to get a holistic and unified idea of what language and lin140
guistics are. Students complained that they felt insecure and
constantly protested against the heavy, heterogeneous reading
load.
For the last five years I have tried to implement various improvements in the classroom practice, content and overall structure of the course. Admittedly, the students’ resistance to theory
and desire for a reduced reading load affected my choices in redesigning the course. The fact that students no longer use Russian as a working language and are practically unable to read in
Russian had to be kept in view. They prefer to read in English
only. In an informal survey, they expressed their preferences for
a textbook to replace the bound volume of heterogeneous reading material. The survey also indicated that on-line or electronic
resources are much preferred. However, most freely available
on-line resources are Internet-based and cannot be controlled or
filtered. Despite its usefulness, the Internet should be approached cautiously as a source of specialized reading.
Neither synchronous nor asynchronous communication in
the e-environment is maintained for this course. The only tool
from the new e-environment options used is e-mail. Forums,
though a useful channel where actual debate can occur, are
traditionally not used in the course. E-mailing is used predominantly for sending seminar notes and receiving written
assignments to be graded. Very few courses in the department
have their own sites and none of them are interactive. There is
one general Linguistics Discussion Board available to all
those who are interested at the following address:
http://linguistics.16.forumer.com/. Students often visit it and
heated discussions take place. The discussion board is maintained by another colleague and is not tailored to the needs
and problems of the General Linguistics course. One of the
deficiencies of the context in which the course is set is the
lack of interdepartmental collaborative work and, moreover,
the lack of exchange of experience with colleagues in the
same predicament. General linguistics on the introductory
level is taught within the scope of fifteen seminars.
141
The basics
As is customary at the department, L1 is rarely, if ever, used in
class, despite the fact that groups are predominantly monolingual and L1 can sometimes be used to clarify contentious issues
or help students feel more secure to express their own opinion.
For one thing, we have a few international students (Macedonian, Turkish, Vietnamese, Korean, etc.), but the more important
consideration is that English is not only the target language but
also the medium of instruction and means for academic pursuits.
The aims of the course are matched against the needs of the
future courses within the linguistic module in the BA programme. In principle, general linguistics has one central aim: to
unravel the mystery of language as a human phenomenon as objectively as possible. The general principles are supposed to be
applicable for providing reliable and adequate descriptions of
individual languages. Language is best studied when contextualized, i.e. when represented in its natural modus vivendi – human
communication. Consequently, theory of communication and
contemporary realities of communicative practices, culturally
and technically informed, are in order. Taking into consideration
all these necessary components in terms of content, an instructor
of this course has the following to think over: (a) degree of
complexity (this is the first theoretical course ever these students
attend coming right from school); (b) temporal restrictions (15
seminars and 15 lectures altogether); (c) structuring; and (d) assessment criteria and procedure.
In this milieu, the course in General Linguistics has many
responsibilities to shoulder. First and foremost, a choice has to
be made regarding the general approach to language studies in
terms of the following at least:
(a) prescriptive vs. descriptive vs. explanatory paradigms;
(b) structural vs. generative vs. functional vs. cognitive
theoretical framework;
(c) internal (microlinguistics) vs. external
(macrolinguistics);
(d) purely theoretical vs. applied linguistics.
Secondly, after a uniform theoretical framework has been
worked out, a fairly comprehensive list of topics has to be compiled so as to cover as vast an area of the infinite field of general
142
linguistics as possible. However, it should be taken into consideration that the course is incorporated in the BA programme of a
general philological department, not a linguistics one. Notwithstanding, this course serves as general introduction to nine compulsory linguistic courses that the students will attend in the subsequent years of their degree programme. With all these considerations in mind, it is difficult to narrow down the enormous
field of linguistics to twenty topics.
In order to ease the process and avoid the subjectivity of personal preferences, I have adopted and slightly modified the
“adequacy requirements” (Van Valin and Lapola 1997: 7-8) for
a linguistic theory and use them as content requirements in drafting the programme for my seminars. The contents of the course
should be characterized by:
(a) observational adequacy – the course should fairly and in
an unbiased way represent major schools, trends and
paradigms in linguistics;
(b) descriptive adequacy – the course should be so balanced
as to reveal properties of language(s), not properties of
theories or models of language; i.e. the course should be
focused on the ontology of language, not ontologies of
linguistics;
(c) explanatory adequacy – the contents of the course
should be as comprehensive as possible in order to be
able to offer explanations for typologically disparate
phenomena and even rarities in languages;
(d) psychological adequacy – the course should comply
with the intuitions of students as speakers of at least two
languages; it should also be compatible with (what is
known about) the psychological mechanisms involved
in natural language processing;
(e) pragmatic adequacy – the knowledge and analytical
skills the students acquire in the course should not be an
end in themselves, rather they should become the operational tools students will use in their specialized linguistic courses further on; the knowledge acquired should
enhance students’ competence and performance in
communicative interaction;
143
(f) typological adequacy – despite being based on English
as the basic source of examples and data, the course
should make use of theories and models formulated in
terms of rules and principles which can be applied to
any type of natural language.
Adopting the above criteria guarantees objectivity and usefulness but does not imply ease of content choices and structuring.
The course has to meet all the requirements of the intellectual
developments of the 21st century. Postmodernism, re-readings,
new communication technologies, AI, IT, glocalist readings of
data, and multiplicity of interpretative paradigms, all exert their
influence on a course devoted to the study of the most human of
all properties – language.
The major ideological and theoretical shift in the past few
years is from conceiving language as an ideal object in itself to
understanding language as a property of the human condition.
Tracing the ground in view of the metalanguages students will
be using and doing justice to new developments in general theoretical linguistics makes the course a flexible and adaptable one.
The basic content-oriented considerations are the following:
(a) Which theory should be adopted for each specific topic?
(b) Should students be presented with both General American phonological system and Standard British English
(RP) system or that of any of the other Englishes?
(c) How much regional, social and cultural variation should
be incorporated into the course’s contents?
(d) Which of the mushrooming branches of linguistics and
interdisciplinary endeavours should be represented?
(e) What will the core readings be?
In describing the decisions I have taken concerning the abovementioned alternatives, I will adopt the three Ms: mind, matter
and manners as defined by J. Ohala (1983) to better outline the
three main directions of reasoning underlying the structuring of
the course. Hereafter, “mind” defines the general theoretical
framework adopted that will define the nature of approaching and
describing language facts and phenomena; “matter” captures the
branches of linguistics that are extensively presented in the
course; and “manner” stands for the classroom techniques and
practices in terms of which the course is implemented.
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Mind
In choosing the core text, one of the primary considerations was
comprehensiveness of coverage backed up by an appropriate
level of formalization or complexity for an introductory course.
The reviewing procedure was guided by the assumption that
meaning construction through language requires advanced mental operations also necessary for other higher-order, specifically
human behaviours. Biological evolution slowly improved conceptual mapping capacities until human beings reached the level
of double-scope blending necessary for advanced mental operations. Paying tribute to what is known about language in evolutionary terms should be included in such a course despite the
controversy over the origin of language debate in linguistics. To
these preliminary background considerations further assessment
criteria were added.
Having language is probably concomitant with wondering
about language, and so, if there is one thing that sets linguistics apart from other disciplines, it is the fact that its subject
matter must be used in the description. There is no metalanguage for language that is not translatable into language, and
a metalanguage is, in any case, also a language. (Malmkjær
1991: xi)
Acknowledging the truthfulness of the above statement may be
used as an explanation for the great difficulties that 1st year students traditionally encounter while doing this course. Besides
studying English, about English, and in English the freshmen
have to learn a whole new language – the metalanguage of linguistics. Compiling personal terminological glossaries has
proven very successful but has not reduced the degree of difficulty students experience. Despite attempts to reduce the terminology involved in the course, the number of terminology entries remains a core problem for students. Terminological indeterminacy and multiple meanings associated with a single term
deriving from different schools and interpretative paradigms
within linguistics surface as the basic stumbling blocks.
This multiplicity is confusing not only for students but for
academics as well as Katamba testifies in the Preface to Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction (1996/2000), “I suspect
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that there are quite a few teachers of introductory linguistic
classes who, like me, have been frustrated by the lack of a single
book that can give their students a self-contained overview of
the subject reflecting today’s linguistic theory and practice”
(Katamba 2000: xv). The fragmented field of linguistics can be
fruitfully studied from different perspectives and numerous introductory textbooks have been written which focus on a single
theoretical model or a selected set of branches of internal and/or
external linguistics. However I tend to side with Katamba in his
opinion that, “undoubtedly, it is still important for beginning
students to get a panoramic view of human language before
delving deep into the nooks and crannies of the various linguistic specialisms” (xv; emphasis added). In order to provide students with a solid grounding in current linguistics we need to
keep in touch with modern developments in contemporary linguistics. Even today the status of theoretical entities, even such
central ones as “word” and “sentence,” remains in dispute. No
consensus obtains about the future trends and modifications that
linguistics should undergo. In such a state of affairs, we cannot
merely wait to see what develops in day-to-day research and
discussion. We need to draw up the theoretical balance sheets of
past investigations and settle on a certain ideological window
into the workings of language. Things get even more complicated when we consider the fact that we are in the age of “rethinking.” Many linguists believe that the whole field of linguistics is in need of rethinking, not only standard theories and orthodox conceptions but the whole standard metalanguage needs
to be rethought. In their view the time has come to demythologise language by applying the non-compartmentalisation principle. This new necessity arises of our novel understanding of the
realities of language. Taylor postulates that reflexivity is a prerequisite for participating in meaningful communication. In Taylor’s own words, “the ability to participate in reflexive discourse
is a prerequisite for engaging with and contributing to the communicational worlds in which we live” (Taylor 2003: 115). This
reflexive discourse is the counterpart of art whose function is to
emancipate us from “the conception that objects have fixed and
unalterable values” (Dewey 1934: 95). A direct consequence of
these new attitudes is the imperceptible but persistent under146
standing of language not as an ideal structured object in itself
but a product of the complex brain-mind of human beings. However, even today with all re-definitions and re-readings in and of
linguistics, Roy Harris’s observation is still valid,
[Saussure] redefined linguistics in such a way that even
those who disagreed with him were forced to accept that
definition, and work within it or around it. Any new redefinition, therefore, is still an enterprise – if anyone wishes to attempt it – which must begin from the original Saussurean
thesis. The task is itself defined by reference to that theoretical position, which has dominated the academic study of
language for most of the present century. (Harris 2003: 20)
The basic features of the Saussurean thesis which still guide any
linguistic theorizing, according to Harris, are the “arbitrariness
of the sign” and “linearity” (20). Yet, H. Davis, claims, “The
academic discipline of linguistics is at a critical stage of development. Whatever consensus there may have been fifteen or
even ten years ago is fast disappearing. A decade on these words
still ring true” (Davis 2003: 1) He believes that the time is ripe
for “rethinking linguistics” and explains that “many issues are in
need of taking into account... [We] deal with the need to rethink
the aims and methods of contemporary linguistics” (2).
Three years later, in 2006, in an authoritative and “the only
genuinely introductory linguistics textbook” (the blurb on the
cover of the textbook 2006), Fasold defines the fundamental job
of the linguist as “understanding and explaining the properties
which are universal to all languages – as well as those which
vary across languages” (Fasold 2006: 2). Among the fundamental design features of languages, in his opinion, the most worthy
of central attention in a textbook are modularity, constituency
and recursion, discreteness, productivity, arbitrariness, reliance
on context and variability (2-6). He conceives of language as a
“distinctive attribute of the human species” (2) without delving
into the nature or specific properties of this attribute. Wisely, the
question of the nature of language is not directly addressed as it
still launches contentious debates among specialists.
In the seventh edition of the Radford and co-authors’ Linguistics: An Introduction textbook, however, the discussion
opens with the following definition: language is “a cognitive
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system which is part of any normal human being’s mental or
psychological structure” (Radford et al 2007: 1; emphasis in the
original). They go on to remark that justice would not be done to
language unless its “social nature” is duly discussed (1; emphasis in the original). They formulate the following fundamental
research questions:
(1) What is the nature of the cognitive system which we
identify with knowing a language?
(2) How do we acquire such a system?
(3) How is this system used in our production and comprehension of speech?
(4) How is this system represented in the brain? (1)
Thus the authors outline their primary concerns with linguistics
proper, developmental linguistics, psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics, most of which belong to the external branches of general linguistic theory. They firmly believe that “we can formulate and evaluate proposals about the human mind by doing linguistics” (2). In the textbook, formal and cognitive approaches
are fruitfully combined with a pronounced preference for Chomskian approaches to language and linguistic theory. This imposes
a well-defined model of thinking about language and narrows a
bit the multiplicity of approaches to linguistic matters. The discussions in the textbook at places become too technical and specialized and rather more demanding than can be beneficial for
first-year philology students.
But before deciding on a textbook as the basic reading after
a long process of reviewing available textbooks, I had to see
why and what exactly in linguistics is in need of a redefinition.
All contributors to the volume On Rethinking Linguistics (2003)
believe that there is an urgent need for linguists to attempt “a
complete overhaul of the linguistic/metalinguistic divide” (Harris 2003: 3).
This overhaul is needed to demonstrate that there has been a
gross confusion by orthodox linguists between first- and
second-order linguistic constructs, which has prevented linguists from arriving at a proficient and practical understanding of communication. Orthodox linguists tend to treat languages as autonomous first-order objects which pre-exist
their use by speakers. For such linguists, particular lan148
guages do exist regardless of what the speakers believe
about them and consequently 'linguistic scientists' investigate the objective existence of linguistic facts. However, integrationists argue that the orthodox linguists' talk of words,
grammar, meaning is just an extension of lay metalanguage.
The difference between laypeople's and the professional linguists' metalanguage is that most orthodox linguists feel the
need to fix, codify and systematise such second-order concepts in order to explain how communication works: so that
on this view speakers become communicators by virtue of
knowing how to use this determinate object. The orthodoxy,
in its endeavour to make language a scientific object of enquiry, segregates first- and second-order abilities and posits
an idealized system, a “fixed code” – in order to explicate
how language makes communication possible. This codetheory model, inherited from Saussure's speech-circuit
model of communication, is derived, as Taylor (1992)
shows, from attempting to place common-sense views of
language on a scientific footing. And it is precisely because
of its mundane appearance that code theory is such a powerful form of intellectual discourse. (3)
In keeping with this line of reasoning, one is forced to admit that
both the traditional structural model of language and the generative model of a recursive and creative system are code theories
in their essence. The multiple correspondences between the two
powerful linguistic paradigms spring from a deep philosophical
affinity which renders both inadequate to answer the requirements of a true-to-life linguistic theory. At present, a viable alternative, suited to the theoretical background (the virtual lack of
such) of first-year students, appears to be the cognitive paradigm, which naturally bridges the artificial divide between firstand second-order linguistic abilities and facts.
All things considered, pursuing these goals lead me to picking out Cognitive Explorations of Language and Linguistics
(2007, second revised edition) as the basic reading material. In
the words of its editors, this textbook, by adopting the cognitive
perspective, studies language as “part of a cognitive system
which comprises perception, emotions, categorization, abstraction processes and reasoning,” which is intricately related to
149
“culture and communities” (Dirven and Verspoor 2007: ix). This
introduction is characterized by clarity of exposition, low degree
of formality and unnecessary technicality and naturalness of descriptions and arguments. Whether it will stimulate and enhance
students’ learning is yet to be assessed.
Matter
All major branches of internal linguistics are represented in the
course – phonetics and phonology, morphology (both derivational
and inflectional), lexicology, semantics, syntax, pragmatics, text
linguistics, diachronic linguistics, language typology and genetic
classification of attested languages. Only some branches of external linguistics are addressed in several lectures – psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and language acquisition.
Manner: Current assessment procedure
The assessment procedure is well-balanced and designed so as to
gauge different competences and acquired knowledge. During
the semester there are four quizzes and a term test on the basis of
which a continuous assessment grade is formed. During the
exam session the students sit for a three-hour written examination in which they write an academic essay on an assigned topic.
The term test checks the analytical abilities of students – it
examines their skills of applying their theoretical knowledge in
analytical tasks (most of them are based on English, except for
the analysis of phenomena that do not occur in English but are
of high frequency cross-linguistically). The quizzes check the
students’ successful comprehension and retention of specific
knowledge. They are based on the readings students have to prepare for each seminar. At the written examination students are
expected to present, in a coherent and cohesive text, their
knowledge and skills in developing a well-argued position on a
linguistic issue. (A sample exam question is: Language – a biological, social or symbolic phenomenon?) The different assessment instruments have different weightings. The final mark for
the course is a sum of continuous assessment (40%) and end-ofterm exam (60%). Within the CA grade 30% of the grade is
made up of class participation (10% participation in class discussions and 20% quizzes) and 70% of the results in the term
150
test. This distribution of assessment instruments allows for shy
students who do not take active class participation to compensate on quizzes and the test. Comparing results for the past four
years reveals a tendency for students to get better and more balanced results in continuous assessment than on the final examination. This can be accounted for with the differences in formats
and the time frame. Continuous assessment is based on performance over a considerable stretch of time and does not require
coherent, in-depth written presentation of well-structured
knowledge. In their course in practical English students have
classes in essay writing but they are not trained to write academic/examination papers based on specific knowledge, which
can account for low performance rates on the written exam. The
highest results are concentrated in grades for quizzes, which implies that students are best equipped to process and internalize
relatively small quantities of specific knowledge, focused on a
narrow topic.
Manner: Classroom environment and practices –
present status and future perspectives
Knowledge is no longer understood as a transferable object. The
new ideas of knowledge as constructed/constructivist and relationally interpreted create the need for novel and flexible approaches to the complex teaching-learning process. The material
should be presented in ways that engage effective processing.
Active, cooperative, student-based learning is a much admired
ideal but practically difficult to achieve in an academic atmosphere which has traditionally been associated with the forms of
lectures and large group seminars organized around the notion of
teacher-centred instruction or teacher-guided discussion of preread material. Tutorials are virtually absent from the teaching
forms applied at our department.
Due to pressures of time and the wide scope of the material,
different topics are discussed in seminars and lectures. The
seminars are conducted separately with five groups which are
expected to end up with the same level of analytical competence,
theoretical knowledge and academic skills for carrying out linguistic argumentation. Student-based learning will have positive
effects on competences but depth and width of theoretical
151
knowledge will have to be sacrificed. It is unrealistic to expect
the same group dynamics and intellectual milieu in five different
groups with 20 to 25 people in each. This is one of the reasons
why many features of a teacher-centred approach are preserved
in the course in general linguistics. It is extremely difficult at
present to construct a classroom that creates a "learning bridge"
of practical application to life situations (Sarasin 1999). Admittedly, in both the lectures and the seminars the traditional transmission model is perceptibly more frequently adopted. The basic
motivation behind this is the desire to make it possible for students to acquire subject-specific knowledge and develop or
rather train their thinking skills and processes towards making
valid and justifiable generalizations (Ruggiero 1988).
Several learning objectives can be identified in the course:
(a) restructuring students’ knowledge; (b) memorization of novel
facts; (c) raising students’ analytical awareness; (d) sensitizing
students to linguistic facts and their potential status as object of
analysis; (e) enhancing students metalinguistic knowledge; (f)
developing routines for argumentation based on knowledge of
language and linguistics; (g) laying the theoretical and metalinguistic foundations for future specialized linguistic modules.
The ultimate objective undeniably is the durable encoding of
concepts, facts and ideas covered in the course and for the students to acquire the ability to generalize, to have a flexible mental representation of the acquired knowledge.
I am still searching for learner-centred educational techniques appropriate for content-laden courses like the one I am
teaching. I am slowly working towards more interactive facilitation models of classroom practice. However trivial it may sound,
despite our acquaintance with the best practices, strategies, and
techniques for developing a more learner-centred class environment, most of them are still difficult to implement on a regular,
daily basis. One of the classroom vehicles that will be implemented as of 2009 is “log exchange” (Vega 2005: 84), a subtype
of peer evaluation. Students will prepare logs of their readings.
They will then exchange the logs with their peers. This will provide different interpretations and internalizations of the same
reading. They will not evaluate each other’s work but, rather,
will be asked to debate and discuss. The students will feel
152
greater responsibility to respond in a critical manner to the reading, as they know that another peer will be learning from their
ideas. Another option that will be tried out next semester is
“Math Pals” (84), a variation again of peer reviewing. In this
classroom vehicle students will sit in pairs at the beginning of
class to compare answers to homework questions and help each
other. This activity promotes better tolerance for different approaches, backgrounds, cognitive and learning styles, etc. However the use of these vehicles has to be carefully considered as
their cost effectiveness will be balanced against using classroom
time for peer evaluation. Restructuring teaching practices towards greater students’ involvement requires students to think
more, participate more actively in class, and take more control
of their own learning experience. The so-called democratic
teaching practices are based on cooperative inquiry, investigation, and dialogue (Sharp 1987). Students are granted the right
but also the heavy responsibility to question, criticize and reconstruct meanings. Of the widely known classroom practices that
give students more space, the most appropriate one for the purposes and nature of the course is “structured inquiry-based discussion”. In this technique, the instructor provides background
information in the form of a lecture, after which students meet in
small groups and use the information provided to solve a problem. A class discussion follows in which all solutions are discussed and critically assessed. The class, as a large group, then
helps students determine which solutions are best. However a
few problems regarding the implementation of “the community
of inquiry” (Vega 2005: 85) practice can be anticipated – a feeling of insecurity or discomfort for teachers and students who are
accustomed to a structured class. Functioning in a situation of
shared control imposes greater responsibility and constant involvement than the conventional transference model, which is
more “relaxed” for students and temporally structured. Granting
students more space raises questions about grading and assessment of process-based assignments. The most important consideration is to make sure whether the students are mature enough
to handle the responsibility of this type of learning environment.
153
Postscript
A worthwhile experiment would be to replace the basic reading
textbook with that of An Introduction to Language by Rodman
Fromkin and Thomson Wadsworth Hyams (2007) and compare
students’ progress and attitudes. A follow-up to the present paper might reveal students’ preferences and achievements based
on the cognitive approach to the study of language and the
mildly Chomskian-cum-structural approach to language well
represented in Fromkin et al.’s textbook.
Works Cited
Bojadzhiev, Zhivko. Uvod v obshtoto ezikoznanie [An Introduction to General Linguistics] Sofia: Paradigma, 2002.
Davis, Hayley. “Introduction: Why Rethink Linguistics.” Rethinking Linguistics. Eds. Hayley Davis and Talbot Taylor.
London: Routledge/Curzon, 2003. 1- 16.
Davis, Hayley and Talbot Taylor eds. Rethinking Linguistics.
London: Routledge/Curzon, 2003.
Dewey, John. Art as Experience. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1934.
Dirven, Rene and Marjorin Verspoor eds. Cognitive Explorations of Language and Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007.
Duridanov, Ivan and Vladimir Georgiev. Ezikoznanie [Linguistics: A University Textbook] Sofia: Naouka i Izkustvo (second revised edition), 1965.
Fasold, Ralph and Jeff Connor-Linton eds. An Introduction to
Language and Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Fromkin, Victoria, Rodman, Robert, and Nina Hyams. An Introduction to Language. Boston, Mass.: Thomson/Heinle,
2007.
Harris, Roy. “On Redefining Linguistics.” Rethinking Linguistics. Eds. Davis, Hayley and Talbot Taylor. Routledge/Curzon, 2003. 17-69.
154
Katamba, Francis. Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction.
Eds.William O’Grady, Michael Dobrovsky and Francis
Katamba. Longman, 1996/ 2000 adapted edition.
Malmkjær, Kirsten, ed. The Linguistics Encyclopedia. London:
Routledge, 1991.
Ohala, John. “The Origin of Sound Patterns in Vocal Tract Constraints.” The Production of Speech. New York: Springer,
1983. 189–216.
Radfrod, Andrew, Martin Atkinson, David Britain, Harald
Clashen, and Andrew Spencer. Linguistics: An Introduction.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007/1999.
Robertson, Douglas. “Integrity in Learner-Centered teaching.”
To Improve the Academy. Eds. Catherine Wehlburg and
Sandra Chadwick-Blossey. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing,
2003. 196-212.
Sarasin, Lynne. Learning Styles Perspectives: Impact in the
Classroom. Madison, WI: Atwood Publishing, 1999.
Splitter, Laurance and Anna M. Sharp. Teaching for Better
Thinking: The Classroom Community of Iinquiry. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research, 1995.
Van Valin, Robert and Lapolla, Randy. Syntax: Structure,
Meaning & Function. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997.
Vega, Quinn and Marilyn Tayler. “Incorporating Course Content
While Fostering a More Learner-Centered Environment.”
College Teaching, vol. 53, issue 2 (2005): 83-85.
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9
The Changing Perspective of Teaching
English Grammar at the University
of Veliko Turnovo: A Case Study
Boryana Bratanova
Introduction
This paper addresses the issue of teaching English grammar by
comparing three grammar books used extensively in Bulgarian
higher education, particularly at the University of Veliko
Turnovo: Spasov’s The Verb in the Structure of English (1972),
Quirk et al’s A Grammar of Contemporary English (1972) and
Hewings’ Advanced Grammar in Use (2005). The first two
grammar books have been widely used in grammar classes since
the establishment of English Studies at the University of Veliko
Turnovo in 1972. As a grammar lecturer, I introduced Hewings’
grammar book in 2006 to meet students’ demand for practically
oriented teaching at advanced level.
As the years of publication indicate, the three books mentioned above cover a time span of more than three decades and
are therefore useful for understanding the changing perspective
of teaching English grammar to university students in Bulgaria.
Apart from re-handling familiar topics, these books also provide
evidence for a major change in the methodology of EFL (grammar) teaching in Bulgarian higher education. The general tendency has been to replace textbooks which can be used for
teaching English grammar to Bulgarians by taking resort to the
mother tongue (in the English for Bulgarians mould) by textbooks which do not do so. This methodological change in grammar teaching results in students’ conscious attempt against
structural calquing with regard to practical English skills.
The three grammar books in question are examined here on
the basis of three major criteria: topics and structure of the book;
approaches and techniques promoted in the book; grammatical
157
rules and terminology introduced in the book. Each of these criteria is discussed separately below.
In Terms of Topics and Structure
The three books offer in-depth treatment of the fundamental
grammatical concepts of the English language. The preface to
the revised 2001 edition of Spasov's grammar book states that “it
belongs to the fund of textbook classics” in Bulgaria. However,
while Spasov's book focuses on the verb alone, while the other
two grammar books are comprehensive and cover the whole
range of grammatical phenomena in English. Due to the limited
number of classes (at BA level, 30 with students taking English
and a second foreign language and 60 with students taking English Studies or Bulgarian and English) assigned to practical
grammar in the curriculum, it is up to the teacher to select the
relevant topics of study and practice. English grammar is one of
the disciplines in the Practical English course for first year students. As such, its major objective is to develop students’ competence in the target language. Apart from elucidating various
grammatical phenomena, it also functions as a terminology
builder since it introduces the basic linguistic terminology which
is then employed in English morphology and syntax courses in
the second and third years.
With changes in the curriculum introduced in Bulgarian
higher education in 2004 it became necessary for the English
grammar course to focus on a wide range of topics related to all
grammatical classes of words as well as structural patterns. That
was my initial motivation for turning to Hewings’ book in
search of the “missing” topics to complete the course syllabus.
The aforementioned changes arose from the introduction of the
European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) in
Bulgarian higher education to conform with the Bologna Process. In terms of grammar teaching it required updating of the
curriculum to include new topics, thereby ensuring that grammar
classes could be related to other disciplines in the Practical English module as well as to morphology and syntax seminars. The
overall change in grammar classes was marked by a move towards practically-oriented language teaching.
158
The changes in the grammar curriculum were also necessitated by the gradual change in the student body in terms of educational background prior to entering university. Up to about
seven years ago nearly all students of English at university level
came from English language schools. Within the last seven years
student recruitment patterns have changed and nowadays students who have graduated from all kinds of schools tend to study
English at the University of Veliko Turnovo. This tendency was
further consolidated in 2008 when high school graduation exams
were reintroduced in Bulgaria. At present in the University of
Veliko Turnovo the high school graduation exam in English is
assigned equal status as the entrance exam in English for higher
education. The students can choose to sit for any or both of these
exams and take the higher score when applying for English
Studies at university level. These changes in the curriculum and
in the students’ educational background presuppose the need for
new textbooks and course materials. Under these circumstances
Hewings’ grammar book turned out to be the appropriate choice
since it can also be used as a self-study book by students whose
English at entrance level calls for extra practice.
Although Hewings’ grammar is less sizeable than Quirk et
al’s, it is by no means less informative. Quirk et al’s grammar
has been considered the “Bible” of grammar teaching in Bulgaria for many years. It has functioned as a reference book for
any linguistic analysis and it features in nearly every university
course in grammar. In my view, Hewings’ book is particularly
useful for first-year students of English because it bridges theory
and practice in a user-friendly manner. Each of its one hundred
units explains grammar and provides related exercises in equal
proportion. It is worth mentioning that each exercise refers to a
particular grammatical item discussed in the theoretical survey
earlier in the unit. The book is also equipped with a CD, which
provides interactive exercises and tests. Another point in favour
of Hewings’ grammar is that it is designed for advanced students
of English, which is the expected level for first-year students of
English at Bulgarian universities. Thus, it appears to be very
useful in homogenising the students’ varying backgrounds of
grammar competences at the desired advanced level.
159
In Terms of Approaches and Techniques
Despite differing approaches, the three books comply with
Azar’s major principle that “grammar is never taught as an end
in itself” (Azar 2007: 6). This principle presupposes an integrated approach to teaching practical language skills, which involves mainly speaking and writing. Spasov’s grammar is in the
vein of the English for Bulgarians mould, and as such it is particularly designed for Bulgarian students of English and stresses
the structural asymmetries between English and Bulgarian. In
other words, whenever relevant, grammatical categories are analysed by means of contrast with the mother tongue. Hewings’
grammar has a universal addressee and uses the direct method
without taking into consideration the mother tongue. At the advanced level the emphasis should be predominantly on avoiding
structural calquing, where students stick to the mother-tongue
structure and fill it with target-language vocabulary. In line with
the intended user, Spasov’s grammar book has a Bulgarian publisher (St. Kliment Ohridski University Press) while Hewings’
grammar has a British publisher (Cambridge University Press),
thus strengthening the “language culture of British English” in
Bulgaria (O'Reilly 1998: 75).
However, as a lecturer I do not completely exclude the
mother tongue in grammar classes since I often contrast English
and Bulgarian when a major distinction between the two languages is under discussion. That is how in their first year students are exposed to key issues in contrastive analysis, which is
a separate course at master’s level. The major similarities and
distinctions between English and Bulgarian seem to be of particular interest to students, as they observe in end-of-course
feedback. Translation is a significant module in the English
Studies programme at the University of Veliko Turnovo, where
the correct use of grammar and the avoidance of structural
calquing is a key notion – so it seems to me that it is important
to keep the mother tongue in view when teaching English grammar. Translation has become an increasingly favoured professional path for English Studies students to pursue in MA programmes as well as after graduating from university.
In terms of techniques, the three books rely heavily on examples to clarify grammatical concepts and structural patterns.
160
While Spasov’s and Quirk et al’s grammar books focus mainly
on the sentence, the exercises in Hewings’ book are graded (or
at least students feel them to be) and often go beyond the level
of separate sentences to the level of the text. Another difference
has to do with the use of translation in grammar teaching. Actually, only Spasov uses translation drills in which students translate from the mother tongue (Bulgarian) into the target language
(English). The use of translation in FLT is considered yet another typical feature of the “English for Bulgarians” series (in
other words, textbooks which draw on contrasting/comparing
Bulgarian and English). In my experience, students show a preference for practical tasks such as gap-filling and sentencecompletion exercises as well as sentence correction drills. From
the students’ perspective discussing types of full verbs, types of
questions or finite and non-finite verb forms is more theoretical
and therefore more complicated.
As a whole, the use of the three grammar books in the classroom serves the two main functions of the grammar course at
university level – improving students’ competence in the target
language (Hewings and Spasov) and introducing the terminological minimum in relation to the courses in theoretical linguistics (Quirk and Spasov). In the grammar classes at the University of Veliko Turnovo this is achieved by covering the major
topics (such as transitivity, emphasis, ellipsis and finiteness)
from Spasov and Quirk, which provide the basic required
knowledge for second and third year students. These topics are
not discussed as an end in themselves but by means of practical
exercises. When students master the new terminology, the
course dwells on more familiar topics at advanced level (such as
tense, modality, reported speech, infinitive or -ing form, article
determination, relative clauses and prepositions) by using primarily Hewings’ book. In some cases both Spasov’s and Hewings’ grammar books are used: for example, when discussing
question structure patterns and passive voice. The approach outlined above bridges theory and practice and ensures gradual
transition from one grammar book to another. In effect, both are
jointly used in the teaching process.
161
In Terms of Rules and Terminology
Quirk et al’s grammar book can be defined as content-based
while Spasov's and Hewings’ are predominantly task-based. The
former addresses mainly theoretical issues while the latter two
aim at cultivating practical language skills. That is why Spasov’s
grammar book has been functioning as the core handbook of
grammar teaching in Bulgaria for decades, and also why I now
regard Hewings’ grammar as the most likely successor. Such a
move is necessitated by the ever-changing demands of grammar
teaching at the level of higher education, especially in the era of
global English.
In order to make advanced grammar books more “marketable” to students, there is a marked tendency to keep rules and
terminology to a minimum in favour of grammar patterns used
in real-life communicative situations. From a methodological
point of view, Hewings’ book retains the emphasis on fluency
and accuracy of language rather than just grammar that was
there in Spasov’s classical book, and is therefore apt for the Bulgarian higher education context. Ultimately, such an integrated
approach to grammar teaching might counter one of the longlasting myths among students that “grammar is ... boring” (Larsen-Freeman 1997).
Conclusion
To sum up: the “canon” of grammar teaching is changing in
terms of methods and approaches rather than content. This gradual process displays parallels and continuity rather than marked
contrasts. The ultimate goal is to turn grammar classes into a
communicative environment based mainly on practical drills and
peer-to-peer discussions within certain theoretical guidelines.
This change is largely encouraged by the students’ feedback.
Nowadays advanced students of English are eager to study
grammar inductively rather than deductively, as has often been
the case before. On the whole, this changing perspective of
teaching English grammar ensures the continuing involvement
and cooperation of students in grammar classes at the university
level in Bulgaria.
162
Works Cited
Azar, Betty. “Grammar-Based Teaching: A Practitioner's Perspective.” Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language (TESL-EJ), Vol. 11, No. 2, 2007. 1-12.
Hewings, Martin. Advanced Grammar in Use. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Larsen-Freeman, Diane. “Grammar and Its Teaching: Challenging the Myths.” 1997. 10 Sept. 2009.
<http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/larsen01.html>.
O'Reilly, Laurie M. “English language cultures in Bulgaria: a
linguistic sibling rivalry?” World Englishes, Vol. 17, No. 1,
1998. 71-84.
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan
Svartvik. A Grammar of Contemporary English. London:
Longman, 1972.
Spasov, Dimiter. The Verb in the Structure of English. Sofia: St.
Kliment Ohridski University Press, 1972.
163
10
Promoting Cultural Studies in the
Bulgarian University Context in the
1990s: Notes on Educational Practice
Petya Tsoneva
The political changes in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989
have allowed for the implementation of collaborative educational ventures between scholars from the former Eastern Bloc
and academics from the US, the UK and Western Europe. Some
of those projects resulted in the introduction of relatively novel
models of teaching into local educational systems. This paper
takes as its starting point an MA programme in British Studies
set up at the University of Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria, in the
1990s, with the active encouragement of the British Council.
Between 1994 and 1999, the programme was co-taught by Bulgarian university staff and a British Council lecturer. Its main
objective was to enhance knowledge of contemporary life in the
UK and promote understanding of the functioning of the political system and media by introducing elements of cultural studies
and sociological research into the Bulgarian pedagogic context.
This led to the marginalization of literary studies. Here I reflect
on this tendency by focusing attention on select MA dissertations produced during the 1990s in the context of the abovementioned programme.
The impulse for working out a new teaching programme in
British Studies could be traced back to the international British
Studies conference held in Veliko Turnovo in 1993, coorganised by the British Council, the Department of English
Studies at the University of Veliko Turnovo and the Bulgarian
Society of British Studies (BSBS). The event brought together
specialists in British literature and history from Eastern and Central Europe as well as British Council lecturers based at local
universities and provided new ideas for future restructuring of
165
traditional programmes and syllabi. Most conference participants who provided feedback in the July 1993 issue of the British Council Newsletter felt that they had been encouraged to develop further the courses in British civilisation, history and literature that had traditionally been taught in separation at their
English Departments and integrate them into British studies programmes (Wadham-Smith 1993:4).
The MA programme at UVT was the offspring of this ambitious project and was apparently designed as a multidisciplinary
project drawing on the fields of sociology, cultural studies, media studies, critical theory and history. It was part of a wider
trend of educational change that aimed at enhancing the role of
British Studies throughout Europe the 1990s. In universities and
secondary schools in the post-communist Eastern and Central
European countries in particular, existing approaches which involved the study of language and linguistics, literature, and, to a
limited extent, civilisation, were transformed in a move towards
relatively novel, transdisciplinary approaches that made considerable use of popular culture and were profoundly influenced by
cultural studies. These processes were greatly facilitated by the
British Council. In practice, the British Studies programme at
the University of Veliko Turnovo with which we are particularly
concerned in the present paper, failed to maintain a balance between its diverse components and overemphasised the “cultural”
ones while leaving the “literary” ones in the margins.
The programme was launched in 1995 with the active support of the British Council and apart from being a new educational venture that challenged the traditionally established lines
of division between disciplines in the Department of English
Studies at the University of Veliko Turnovo it could be seen as
an indicator of the wider and more complex social and political
forces at work in the early years of Bulgaria’s transition to liberal democracy and a market economy. This transition tended to
produce an atmosphere of uncertainty in which elements of
“old” and “new” social and political models and practices coexisted.
In my view, the MA programme in question was a controversial educational experiment. On the one hand, by combining
literature, cultural studies and sociology it aimed at implement166
ing new ideas and ways of teaching British Studies, itself a new
area of teaching and research at the time, in the context of enhanced cross-cultural dialogue. On the other hand, the disproportionately high percentage of students’ dissertations dealing
with cultural issues, which will be examined further on, suggests
that the role and place of literature in this interdisciplinary project was minimal. The picture becomes clearer when we draw
evidence from figures.
The Department of English and American Studies at the
University of Veliko Turnovo keeps records of about 20 MA
dissertations produced between 1995 and 1998 when this particular version of the British Studies programme was carried out.
At present the Department offers an MA programme in British
and Irish Studies which is rather different from the previous one.
Approximately 80 % of the dissertations under consideration
deal with socio-cultural issues while only 20% of the students
chose, or were given a chance, to locate their studies in the field
of literature. The following list of dissertation titles which I have
attempted to group according to their subjects of discussion and
years of submission, illustrates this tendency:
British Studies MA Programme
1995
Cultural Studies
“Welcome to the Pleasure Dome!” – An Analysis of Contemporary British Pop Music
The Cultural Significance of British Soap Operas
The “Golden Years” of Youth Culture: An Analysis of the
Innovation of Youth in Britain during the1960s – 1970s
Black People on the “Box” – Aspects of Representation
Literary Studies
Identity and Its Construction(s) in Angela Carter’s The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman and Vladimir
Nabokov’s Pale Fire
167
1996
Cultural Studies
What Do Commercial Breaks Sell to Us?
1997
Cultural Studies
Men and Women in the Women’s Magazine: A Case-Study
of Gender Issues in Cosmopolitan
Has the Battle of the Sexes Been Won? An Intergenerational
Comparison
A 24-Hour Mediated World: Some Key Effects of Media on
Everyday Life
The World of the Family and Television Advertising
The Role of Sport in British Society
Literary Studies
Fantasies of “Darkest Eastern Europe” in Bram Stoker’s
Dracula
Portrayal of Otherness in Bram Stoker’s Dracula
1998
Cultural Studies
Experience Identity. The New Fragrance for Cultural Studies
The Policy of Self-Regulation – A Comparative Study of the
Governing Principles of the British and the Bulgarian Press
Do We Know Why? Representations of Gender – A Comparative Study of British and Bulgarian Media
Literary Studies
Gender in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Its Interpretation in
Francis Ford Coppola’s Love Never Dies
The apparent disproportion in the ratio of literary and cultural thematic areas covered in the dissertations demonstrates the
168
lack of cohesion between the two disciplines in this project and
points to a state of tension between them which was apparently
not overcome at the time.
The debate between literary and cultural studies, which has
recently been brought to the forefront yet again, was an important ideological feature of the Anglophone academic context in
the 1990s (Easthope 1991:5). In her article “Literary Studies,
Cultural Studies: the Case for a Cease-Fire” Eva Kushner points
out that it is foreshadowed by the earlier polemical tensions between literary history and theory, and is fostered by the new
thinking of literature itself in relation to culture. Kushner sees
“the advent of the new opposition, that between literary and cultural studies, as a result of the breaking down of the earlier opposition” (Kushner 2006:72). She further argues that the ongoing debate demands “hard choices... between a concept of literature defined by specifically aesthetic criteria, and a literary discourse seen as part of the social discourse at large, regardless of
formal criteria and inseparably from the entire set of sociocultural phenomena including mass phenomena” (72). This state
of tension between concepts has apparently produced tension
between disciplines which generates certain pedagogical concerns. Those are reflected in the absence of balance between cultural and literary studies in postgraduate university programmes
such as the one that is under consideration here.
The British Studies programme in question represents a case
in which an interdisciplinary project did not increase cooperation between literary and cultural studies but rather produced an
imbalance between them. Some of that programme’s graduates,
who are presently staff members of the Department of English
and American Studies, confessed to feeling disappointed with
the minimal provision of classes in English literature while cultural studies was promoted disproportionately.1 Indeed, some
attempts at defining the scope and aims of British Studies at the
time reveal its greater affinity for cultural studies. A viable definition of cultural studies reads that “[c]ultural studies is an ongoing, critical, reflexive practice grounded in theory and politics of
the present” (Jordan 2009: 2). A parallel definition goes for British Studies: “British studies is a fast-growing field of interdisciplinary research which aims to explore the distinctive political,
169
social and cultural phenomena of contemporary Britain” (Wadham-Smith 1993:1). In both definitions the focus on the present
state of development of cultural processes is evident. While cultural studies is primarily concerned with the present, the scope
of literary studies may extend to the most remote past. However,
both disciplines gravitate towards the present. The study of literature does not only involve identification of the already established literary specificity of the text that bears the imprint of the
context of its production, it likewise mediates between past and
present and formulates meanings relevant to the present when
reading texts from the past. This should have been used as a basis of cooperation between cultural and literary studies in the
programme.
The spectrum of areas covered in the cultural studies dissertations produced within the context of the programme includes
advertising, gender stereotypes in the British media, race, subcultures and media stereotypes in Britain, and is indicative of the
students’ interest in the study of culture in its contemporary state
of development. Most dissertations aim at locating and identifying the forces that shape and predetermine everyday life. The
students employ the methods of statistical analysis, using empirical evidence, and undertaking descriptive and analytical approaches in their efforts to establish the effects that cultural texts
have upon their audiences and determine how audiences, in turn,
experience and re-shape cultural texts2.
Within the cultural studies section of the programme, it is
understandable that the students had to narrow down their analyses to perceptions of contemporary culture and the non-literary
texts produced in it. However, an interdisciplinary approach to
culture is likely to offer a wider lens of understanding the global
cultural processes that have moulded and led to the particular
stage of development of a particular society. I would suggest
that the marginalization of literary texts in this venture diminished the complexity and expanse of cultural awareness and thus
could be seen as reductionist and narrowly focused.
I ground my claim in Lois Tyson’s observation that “literary
texts are cultural artefacts that can tell us something about the
interplay of discourses, the web of social meanings, operating in
the time and place in which the text was written” (Tyson 1999:
170
288-289). With this definition in mind and in the knowledge that
cultural studies, though it has moved a long way from textcentred analysis, is bound to explore the real-life contextual determinants of the text, I suggest that literary texts can likewise
contribute to our understanding of reality. Indeed, this statement
is highly problematic as literary texts present us with a mediated
reality, (re)invented by the author, which the reader enters with
certain expectations, shaped by another real-life context. However, we can also expect that the literary text itself can shape
readers’ responses in relation to reality and thus “navigate” them
towards new attitudes to it.
As I am likewise concerned with the place and role of the
literary text in cultural studies, I consider some definitions of the
term “literature.” One of the most common views of literature is
that it is “imaginative” writing in the sense of fiction – writing
that is not literally “true.” However, as Terry Eagleton suggests,
drawing a clear demarcation line between “fact” and “fiction”
cannot be applied to early epic texts and in the English context
of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the word
“novel” seems to have been used about both true and fictional
events (Eagleton 1996: 1). Another perspective on literature
keeps in focus the specific features of literary language that,
unlike everyday language, is charged with a particular power of
expressivity. Indeed, this is a view taken by the Russian formalists who go into another extreme by pointing out that the formal
features of the literary work predetermine its content. For the
purposes of this article I am also guided by Eagleton’s observation that the reader, rather than searching for any intrinsic characteristics, defines a literary text as such by projecting his/her
own expectations onto it (8). He provides some illuminating examples of this treatment of literature, of which the following one
is particularly insightful: “[i]f I pore over the railway timetable
not to discover a train connection, but to stimulate in myself
general reflections on the speed and complexity of modern existence, then I might be said to be reading it as literature” (8).
What Eagleton suggests is that “literature” is a term that resists
any definitive identification. At the same time, by this example
he points to the role of a text in a context, its relations with its
“surroundings,” the ways in which it “behaves.”
171
The context-responsive literary text also reveals the forces
and constraints that act upon the writer. According to Keith
Green and Jill LeBihan, these include the following:
Language itself
Tradition and genre
Unspoken assumptions of society in which the author is a part
Unconscious desires
Class
Race
Gender
The process of publication and editing. (Keith and LeBihan
1995: 187)
Consequently, the literary text, despite being autonomous by
virtue of its aesthetic value, is inextricably tied to extra-textual
circumstances and maps changing ideological functions and attitudes. Thus, for cultural critics, a literary text can perform cultural work as it shapes the cultural experience of those who encounter it. This observation raises an array of questions such as:
what part does the reader play in the creation and realization of
the meaning(s) of a text? If those meanings are “personal,” i.e.,
formed by readers, is there a range of possible meanings which
are prescribed in a culture?
I focus here on the significance of the three “components”
that participate in the production of meaning(s) in the literary
text: reader, text and writer. According to Roland Barthes, the
reader is the “‘I’ which approaches the text” and his/her interpretation of the text is conditioned by a particular cultural context that the reader inevitably maps on the text when reading it
(Barthes 1974: 10). The text itself “provokes” responses and can
project a specific cultural or political situation. For example, the
First World War triggered a wide range of social, political and
artistic responses. Louis Aragon was one of the outstanding
French intellectuals of the time who experienced the growing
intensity of flow between artistic creation and political activity.
Aragon began his literary career as an active supporter of and
participant in Dadaism – a movement that emerged as a rejection
of the social and moral values of which the First World War was
believed to be a consequence. The members of Dada created
artworks that defied intellectual analysis, dismantled the icons of
172
high culture and emptied out the traditional understanding of
artistic creation, as the following poem by Aragon from his
Dada phase illustrates:
Suicide
Abcdef
ghijkl
mnopqr
stuvw
x y z. (quoted in Strom 2004: 37)
The poem is evidently astonishing as, apart from its formal design, it is not composed in the traditional modes and conventions
of poetry. It seems that the title contains the only word that lends
meaning to the strings of letters, arranged in an alphabetic order.
The poem represents an anti-icon of poetic creation through a
symbolic linguistic “suicide” and announces that language has
exhausted its creative energy and can no longer be used in any
conventional mode. In fact, this bizarre poem, which presents a
conundrum to the uninformed reader, is an example of the artistic revolt against the conventional modes of expression in art
and literature that the post-First World War avant-garde movements undertook. It reflects the growing sense of disappointment
with the values and beliefs that the First World War shattered
and points to the avant-garde vision of the poet and artist as an
agent of radical reform and a herald of newness. Consequently, a
literary text can reveal a lot about the context of its emergence.
However, it is also possible to see the text itself as a major
source of forces and constraints that act upon the author and
reader and shape their attitudes. Unlike the traditional humanist
point of view, which is rooted in the clear categorizing of the
positions of author, text and reader, the author being the “Receptor” of divine inspiration and “Creator of the Text,” the poststructuralist view is that language “shapes” the author, language
is “the Creator” and “author” / “reader” is just the name of a
subject position within a text. Consequently, both “author” and
“reader” become part of a specific discursive structure that reveals the social and cultural status of this discourse (Foucault
1977: 124).
In fact, although the relationship between literary and cultural studies may become problematic and the example of the
173
MA programme under discussion proves it, it does not have to
exclude co-operation. I have attempted to outline two major
critical positions with regard to the literary text in order to explain its communicative value as a “cultural” artefact. On the
one hand, it provides insight into the extra-textual circumstances
that map changing ideological functions and attitudes onto it. On
the other hand, it generates, in turn, through its discursive structure, the social and cultural status of discourse. In spite of their
diametrical reflexivity, both perspectives focus on the liminality
of the literary text and its capacity to shape – and be shaped by –
the contexts of its production and reception. Both perspectives
also confirm Tyson’s observation that “literary texts are cultural
artefacts that can tell us something about the interplay of discourses, the web of social meanings, operating in the time and
place in which the text was written [and read]” (Tyson 1999:
288-289).
Obviously, one major reason for redeeming literature from
its underprivileged position in the British Studies programme
under consideration is that we can keep close track of the points
of emergence of the cultural within literary studies. Quoting
Bernheimer’s definition of the present borderline state of existence of traditionally autonomous disciplines, Kushner observes
that implicit in it is
the current broadening of the concept of literature and the
questioning of its specificity ... the impact of other humanities and social science disciplines upon literary theory, the
interaction but also the mutual questioning between élite and
popular culture; the lively jolt dealt to the literary system by
feminist and post- colonial readings ... not to mention the
questioning of the identity of the literary text itself and its
hermeneutic destiny. (Kushner 2006: 73)
The “cultural” permeates the “literary” in cases when the latter allows for taking into account the ideological and cultural
contexts of literary texts. It is understandable why the comingtogether of the literary and cultural perspectives is best observed
in genres such as autobiography and travel writing, but literary
texts can be of interest to cultural studies for reasons other than
genre. For example, the opening of literary theory to gender and
174
feminist studies makes it possible to consider cultural phenomena within the literary text itself.
Some of the few MA dissertations committed to the study of
literary problems under the British Studies programme at the
University of Veliko Turnovo demonstrate a desire to search
beyond the “hermeneutic destiny” (see Kushner) of literary texts
and uncover layers of cultural significance encoded in them. The
very titles of these dissertations are telling: Fantasies of “Darkest Eastern Europe” in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Zdravka Slavova 1997); Portrayal of Otherness in Bram Stoker’s Dracula
(Gabriela Gencheva 1997); Gender in Bram Stoker’s Dracula
and Its Interpretation in Francis Ford Coppola’s Love Never
Dies (Donika Dimitrova 1998). Significantly, Dimitrova begins
her dissertation with the following clear statement:
The aim of my diploma paper is to trace the development of
the theme of gender as an expression of the anxieties concerning sexualized divisions of social roles, to present a succinct characteristic of the male-female relations as they had
been viewed and depicted by Stoker, using as a background
the context of the late Victorian moral code and then, to look
closely and on the basis of comparative analysis upon the interpretation this very issue has been subjected to in
Coppola’s film. (Dimitrova 1998: 4)
A major merit of this dissertation is the student’s interdisciplinary approach – she tries to establish a parallel between the cultural heritage of Stoker’s book and one of its late twentiethcentury film interpretations. That literary texts like Dracula can
be discussed from a cultural perspective is well evident from the
diversity of discourses they generate – ethnography, imperialist
and racial ideologies, discourses of identity and degeneration,
modes of feminism etc.
In conclusion, the location of boundaries (also between disciplines) becomes less problematic in times when we move
away from singularities and welcome “the emergence of ... interstices” (Bhabha 1994:2). The collapse of disciplinary boundaries in educational programmes in Bulgaria has intensified since
the 1990s with the advent of new teaching models. The movement towards interdisciplinarity is likewise a characteristic feature of the British Studies programme under consideration.
175
However, regretfully the role of literary studies within it remained vague and out of focus.
The context-responsive nature of literary texts predetermines
their central position in the dialogue between past and present
that seems to have been marginalized in the educational practice
of the 1990s. In her evaluation notes Ruth Cherrington (1998),
British Council lecturer in cultural studies within this programme, observes that some of the tasks students have attempted to accomplish in their dissertations are “to prove that
the media are the lenses through which we take in information
about the world around us,” “examine the question of power as
it relates to the study of mass-produced culture,” “study the specific features of contemporary youth cultures as a very important
target audience for the culture industries,” “examine the contestable nature of the debate on self-regulation, and concentrate ...
on its evolution after the death of the Princess of Wales.” All
these objectives are justified within the particular demands of
the 1990s cultural studies course that Cherrington taught and
indicate that students were encouraged to study predominantly
contemporary and popular culture. I would suggest that the
value of studying literature is considerably highlighted against
the backdrop of this educational experiment. As Donald Stone
argues, literature is a never-ending dialogue between past and
present, which is always open to new responses from generation
to generation (Stone 1997: 2). Yin Qiping and Chen Shubo
(2002) also observe that although we may not fully accept some
past truth-claims and communal values, they are contemporary
to us in the sense that, in the literary context, they form a dialogical relationship with us.
Rounding up these ideas, I would suggest that privileging
cultural over literary studies can be defined as a controversial
educational practice. Indeed, students have certainly benefited
from some aspects of the cultural studies course, such as its
openness to the problems and concerns of contemporary reality.
They may have developed certain skills in analyzing the contexts and settings of major political and social events (the death
of Princess Diana, Bulgaria’s transition to liberal democracy).
However, their apparent preoccupation with the contemporary
stage of development of culture leaves space for discussion of
176
the wider trends and processes within which a particular cultural
period is formed. In my opinion, we would gain a partial and
one-sided understanding of contemporary culture if we decline
to acknowledge the processes of its constant redefinition against
the background of past periods. In the case of literary studies,
the critical reader is expected not only to discern the context of
production and reception of literary texts, but also to take part in
the dialogue between past and present that contributes to a more
comprehensive understanding of a given cultural period. Consequently, the tendency to privilege cultural over literary studies in
that particular educational practice mainly serves to demonstrate
that both disciplines may develop more effectively in dialogue
on equal grounds.
Notes
1
I owe this observation to Pavel Petkov and Yarmila Daskalova.
2
My summary of the students’ aims and approaches is based on selected MA dissertations – see bibliography.
Works Cited
Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Hill and
Wang, 1974.
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London and New
York: Routledge, 1994.
Cherrington, Ruth. Evaluation Notes on A 24-Hour Mediated
World: Some Key Effects of Media on Everyday Life
(Vanovska 1997 dissertation); Do We Know Why? Representations of Gender – A Comparative Study of British and
Bulgarian Media (Vasileva 1998 dissertation) and The Policy of Self-Regulation – A Comparative Study of the Governing Principles of the British and the Bulgarian Press (Georgieva 1998 dissertation).
Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
Easthope, Anthony. Literary into Cultural Studies. London and
New York: Routledge, 1991.
177
Foucault, Michel. “What is an Author?” Language, CounterMemory, Practice. New York: Cornell University Press,
1977.
Green, Keith and Jill LeBihan. Critical Theory and Practice:
Coursebook. London: Routledge, 1995.
Jordan, Glenn. “Where is Cultural Studies Today.” Aedean
Newsletter, November 2000.
Kovala, Urpo. “Introduction to Cultural Text Analysis and Liksom’s Short Story ‘We Got Married’.” CLC Web: Comparative Literature and Culture, 4:4, 2002. 15 Sept. 2009.
< http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol4/iss4/1/>.
Kushner, Eva. “Literary Studies, Cultural Studies: The Case for
a Cease-Fire.” Alicante: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 2006. 15 Sept. 2009.
<http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/FichaObra.html?Ref=
18608&portal=0>.
Qiping Yin and Shubo Chen. “Teaching English Literature in
China: Importance, Problems and Countermeasures.” World
Englishes, London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002. 15 Sept. 2009.
<http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=
aph&AN=7122941&site=ehost-live> .
Stone, Donald. Communications with the Future. Ann Arbor:
The University of Michigan Press, 1997.
Strom, Kirsten. “‘Avant-Garde or What?’: Surrealism Reconceived as Political Culture.” The Journal of Aesthetics and
Art Criticism, 1 (2004). 15 Sept. 2009.
<http://www.jstor.org/pss/1559210 >.
Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide.
New York: Garland Publishing, 1999. 15 Sept. 2009.
<http://people.cedarville.edu/Employee/woodm/index.htm>.
Wadham-Smith, Nick. Review of Materials. British Studies Now
(1993). 15 Sept. 2009.
<http://www.britishcouncil.org/studies/bsn_pdfs/bsn02.pdf>.
178
MA Dissertations
Anita Veleva. Black People on the “Box” – Aspects of Representation, 1995.
Galya Vanovska. A 24-Hour Mediated World: Some Key Effects of Media on Everyday Life, 1997.
Janan Raim. Men and Women in the Women’s Magazine: A
Case-Study of Gender Issues in “Cosmopolitan”, 1997.
Rossitza Mardova. The “Golden Years” of Youth Culture:
An Analysis of the Innovation of Youth in Britain During
the1960s – 1970s, 1995.
Vesela Vasileva. Do We Know Why? Representations of
Gender – A Comparative Study of British and Bulgarian Media,
1998.
179
11
Reading/Teaching British Culture from
a Comparative Perspective?
Pavel Petkov
At the root of the paradigm shift discussed in this paper lies
postmodernism: an intellectual phenomenon which has caused a
considerable swell in the waters of many a scholarly/pedagogic
sphere. Before focusing on the shift itself, I will briefly mention
two characteristics of postmodernism which may have facilitated
its marked influence on British Studies, an area of teaching and
research which was promoted in Eastern and Central Europe in
the 1990s, mainly (but not exclusively) by the British Council.
The first characteristic, the political nature of postmodernism,
has been elaborated by Linda Hutcheon, who writes that “postmodernism is a phenomenon whose mode is resolutely contradictory as well as unavoidably political” (Hutcheon 1989: 1).
She further quotes Roland Barthes, in whose opinion, “where
politics begins is where imitation ceases” (Barthes 1977: 154),
and concludes that “this is where the self-reflexive, parodic art
of the postmodern comes in” (Hutcheon 1989: 3). The other
characteristic has been mentioned by Charles Russell in an article published in 1980, where he observes that from a postmodern perspective the world can only be perceived through “a network of socially established meaning systems, the discourses of
our culture” (Russell 1993: 289). The expression “discourses of
our culture” is a key one here. It implies that literature constitutes only one discourse, possibly multi-layered itself, among
many and partially explains the orientation of British studies, a
cross- and interdisciplinary area which, as was already remarked, developed in the 1990s.
It is worth mentioning that the influence that postmodern
thought has had in the fields of literary and cultural studies is, to
an extent, paradoxical. One of its most widely accepted characteristics is the tendency to problematize ideological and theoreti181
cal premises, questioning them mercilessly and exposing their
underlying blind spots and fallacies. In doing so, however,
postmodernism itself inevitably, though unintentionally, acquires the characteristics of a theoretical system. Significantly,
even Linda Hutcheon, one of its staunchest advocates, remarks
that “postmodernism ultimately manages to install and reinforce
as much as to undermine and subvert the conventions and presuppositions it appears to challenge” (Hutcheon 1989: 1-2).
As the postmodernist world view tightened its grip on academia worldwide (and especially in the West1), cultural and literary studies saw the emergence of new tendencies. These tendencies, which are essentially contrary to traditional humanism,
and relativistic, are supported and elaborated upon by renowned
scholars and specialists, such as the late Anthony Easthope who
proclaimed a movement away from literary studies towards the
more comprehensive domain of cultural studies. Such proclamations had certain practical implications for British Studies as developed within Central and Eastern European contexts. For instance, there was a change in the material that students were encouraged to work with. As is illustrated by the case of Veliko
Turnovo University, discussed below, less attention was given to
literature to the benefit of various forms of popular culture
items. In effect, the University’s MA programme in British studies began to be viewed essentially as a cultural studies programme which hardly allowed any space for anything but mass
culture.
Arguments for this kind of change can be found in the writings of Anthony Easthope, one of the defenders of the paradigm
shift, who recommends the adoption of a “‘unified field theory’
for the combined study of literary texts and those from popular
culture” (Easthope 1991: 5). He goes on to give a variety of arguments in favour of such a theory. As a major cause of the decline of literary studies he identifies the boom of mass culture in
the 1960s. In his view, the split between “high” and “pop” culture was facilitated by the demise of the myth of the “unity” of
the text. Thus, he remarks: “[i]f the method could no longer
demonstrate unity then the distinction between significantly unified canonical texts and non-unified – and therefore noncanonical texts – became eroded, and the field of literary study
182
fell into profound question” (19). Further on he undertakes to
“redefine and reinstate literary value in a way which cleanses it
of the hegemonic force it acquires in the paradigm of literary
study” (44). Immediately after that, however, he is forced to affirm the concept of “literary value.” Otherwise he would not be
able to redefine it. This allows him to state once again that pop
culture should be given the green light: “[t]he way is open for a
combined analysis of literary and non-literary texts as instances
of signifying practice” (74).
Other scholars have likewise contributed to the revaluation
of traditional areas of culture. Thus, in 1979 Harold Bloom remarks that “there are no texts, but only interpretations” (Bloom
et al 1979: 6), which seems to strengthen the justification for the
abandonment of any sort of “canon”: if interpretation is all that
exists, it is of no importance what is being interpreted. In 1980
Stanley Fish similarly declares that the text is only what the
reader sees and denies it autonomous identity. Terry Eagleton,
on the other hand, states that “if anything is to be an object of
study it is this whole field of practices rather than just those
sometimes rather obscurely labelled ‘literature’” (Eagleton
2008: 178).
As we shall see later, this paradigm shift did not go unopposed but the new tendencies had gained momentum and were
hard to neutralize. The British Studies programme at the University of Veliko Turnovo during the 1990s is a case in point.
The University of Veliko Turnovo Case
When I first picked up the pile of British Studies MA dissertations produced between 1993 and 1999 under the supervision of
our then British Council lecturer I did so with two expectations:
one, that the cultural issues discussed in these dissertations
would have been subjected to a more or less comparative approach – and I mean comparative with respect to the student’s
own Bulgarian culture; and, two, that some significant attention
would have been paid to literature – and I do not mean only that
literature which was part of the red-hot fashionable youth culture context at the time. I was wrong on both counts. A 25 percent sample of the titles of these dissertations, stored at the Uni183
versity of Veliko Turnovo, makes it quite clear why I should
have expected to be mistaken:
– The Role of Sport in the British Society
– A 24-Hour Mediated World: Some Key Effects of Media on
Everyday Life
– The World of the Family and Television Advertising
– Men and Women in the Women’s Magazines
– What Do Commercial Breaks Sell to Us? (The role of television advertisement in Britain)
– ‘Welcome to the Pleasure Dome!’ – An Analysis of Contemporary British Pop Music
– The “Golden Years” of Youth Culture: An Analysis of the
Innovation of Youth in Britain During 1960s – 1970s
– The Cultural Significance of British Soap Operas
– Black Women in Britain Fighting Against Double Discrimination
– Today’s Britain in the Light of the Black Experience
– Trainspotting: A Crosscultural Exploration
When I went through these dissertations, I was left with the impression that the absence of a comparative approach in them was
partly caused by the lecturer’s apparent conviction that in order
to get a clear idea of contemporary British reality, you need to
concentrate entirely on contemporary cultural items, paying extra special attention to mass culture – films, soap operas, advertising etc. – whereby you would somehow manage to obtain an
objective, high-resolution photograph of the exact state of contemporary British society. At the centre of everything seems to
be the rather slippery question, “What is reality right now?” –
which is not only slippery but also presumptuous because it
tempts one to indulge in oversimplification and even reductionism.
Why am I saying that the authors of those MA dissertations
should have been encouraged to adopt a comparative approach?
There are two reasons for this.
First, the students did not have direct and permanent access
to the target culture. They had to use second-hand material.
They could obtain occasional selected glimpses (not, of course,
selected by them) of this culture, and base their analysis on those
glimpses, which is a somewhat questionable approach, espe184
cially if one aims at “understanding” a society. Can a person
with limited knowledge of a society reliably answer questions
about it? What is even more important, can s/he ask adequate
questions? Will s/he not be in danger of inadvertently fusing certain aspects of his/her own culture with the target one, thus making the analysis unclear? It seems to me that there would be such
a risk and that such a researcher could easily fall victim to the
Marco Polo syndrome. Since there are two separate definitions
of this syndrome, I would like to make it clear that I am not using the expression to mean “superiority complex,” but rather to
describe a phenomenon which Umberto Eco (1998) discusses.
Eco draws attention to the Venetian traveller’s representation of an experience he claims to have had in Java. In his Travels he reported to have seen a unicorn on that island (Polo 1997:
218). The traveller gave a detailed description of the animal
from which it is clear that what he really saw was a rhinoceros.
Save for the presence of a horn on top of its muzzle, the real
animal was quite different from the popular descriptions of the
mythic creature. Why, then, did Polo not conclude that he had,
in reality, seen something new and unfamiliar? According to
Eco, he was simply unable to do so because of what the critic
calls the “background books” that he was carrying with him
(Eco 1998: 54). The term “background book,” or “encyclopaedia”, stands for every person’s beliefs, assumptions, stereotypes,
expectations or superstitions, which have been installed into
their minds by their own social environments. It also includes
any previous knowledge they might have as well as what they
are likely to take for granted. Those “books” inevitably condition everyone’s mind to perceive what s/he expects to perceive.
People examining foreign cultures “know” in advance what they
are about to discover because their prior knowledge is telling
them what they are expected to discover. How they perceive
what they discover is heavily influenced by their invisible
“background books.”
In their group unconscious they met with serious difficulties
in making changes in the pictures of foreign countries and cultures which were embedded in their minds. When something
came up to challenge this passivity and inflexibility they simply
did not accept the challenge. If some disturbing fact was dis185
missible, they readily dismissed it. If it was not, they very seldom allowed it to alter the world they had created in their heads.
Instead, they modified the new fact and forced it to assume a
familiar shape, in which it would cease to be something new and
would become a part of the stable and comforting paradigm of
the well-known world, yet another fragment of the Self rather
than a disturbing portion of the Other.
This model of unconscious – or semi-conscious – reasoning
and the perception of the world it is conducive to has never been
easy to oppose. Even some of the most progressive and enlightened minds of Western civilization were under its influence.
The adoption of a comparative approach has proved to be one
of the most reliable weapons against this limiting syndrome. The
abandonment of comparison, on the other hand, especially by students who do not have much experience of studying other cultures, easily leads to describing phenomena, tendencies and even
“facts” which reside solely in the mind of the person doing the
describing. Bulgarian students have had their fair share of “forcefeeding” ideas and notions about Western societies. It is no surprise then that trying to focus on selected bits and pieces of a
Western target culture has led them to describe what has in fact
been imbedded in their minds beforehand – mostly through the
mass media in the years following the political changes of 1989.
A comparative approach would have helped the students
compensate for this limitation. In the present context, by a comparative approach I mean the examination of how the target material (films, TV programmes, books, etc) was received here – at
least to the extent that the separate constituent parts of that material had counterparts in Bulgaria. This approach would have protected the students against some of the limitations of the selected
material they were able to use, and would have (possibly) enabled them to avail themselves of the advantages of novel areas
and methods of analysis. Unfortunately, to date few attempts
have been made in the English Studies departments in Bulgaria
to analyze youth culture and its subcultures. The British studies
MA programme provided the students of the 90s with opportunities to do something valuable in a largely unexplored sphere.
The students should have been encouraged to avail themselves
of the opportunities, if only to practise their analytical skills on a
186
fresh terrain. Points of difference – gender, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, nationality, class – and the ways in which those
categories are informed by other discourses and practices should
have been central to the MA dissertations under consideration.
This type of comparative, interdisciplinary approach to the study
of British culture could have been characterised by both flexibility and usefulness in terms of objects of study and methodology.
Every postgraduate student, with the assistance of the British
Council lecturer, should have designed his/her own academic
programme to meet concrete research interests that would have,
hopefully, cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries and allowed the student to try his/her hand at applying novel methods
that would have given very encouraging results. The students
should have been generally encouraged, as part of this process,
to question the definition of disciplinary boundaries and to place
their objects of study in their “proper” contexts.
Instead, during the 1990s, the opposite was silently encouraged by the British Council representative at the University of
Veliko Turnovo: work with a zoomed-in snapshot of some segment of contemporary British pop-culture and do not concern
yourself with comparisons. I would like to illustrate that with a
short quotation from the MA thesis entitled A 24-Hour Mediated
World: Some Key Effects of Media on Everyday Life (1997):
It is taken for granted here theoretically that the societies
under investigation are developed industrial countries. My
purpose will not be to compare the people of ‘developing’
countries (like Bulgaria) with the British, let us say. Assuming that our society is about to take the well-trodden path of
developed capitalist countries, I will simplify the picture by
neglecting the differences that exist between the ‘Big Ones’
and the Third World Ones.
The second reason why the students should have been encouraged to adopt a comparative approach is that its abandonment encourages a positivistic perspective of the whole subject.
Since there are at least two different definitions of positivism, I
consider it necessary to point out that the definition I have in
mind is the one adopted by most contemporary encyclopaedias
such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica Online (2009): “[s]trict
adherence to the testimony of observation and experience.” In
187
historical terms, positivism is defined as “[a] philosophical
movement that holds [...] that all meaningful statements are either analytic or conclusively verifiable or at least confirmable by
observation and experiment and that metaphysical theories are
therefore strictly meaningless” (Merriam Webster Online, 2009).
It is clear that the “zoomed-in snapshot” method of dealing with
the reality of a foreign culture navigates dangerously close to the
above-mentioned descriptions of positivism. It also excludes the
possibility of tracing any cause and effect relationship within the
context of a particular culture, especially when that culture is not
your own.
Another trend that forces itself on the attention of the reader
of these MA dissertations is the consistent marginalizing of literature, especially if it is not contemporary. There is hardly a
thesis from among those whose titles I have listed at the beginning of this paper that deals with a literary subject. I consider
this quite telling.
In the rare cases when literary works were discussed during
that time (I too belong to that generation of students), it was done
with a somewhat naïve intention to “understand reality,” the idea
being that reality was, as it were, mirrored in the literary works of
the particular period. There is something in that, of course, and I
will not propose to argue whether this is a reasonable position or
not, but there is one thing that needs to be categorically stated: to
use literature as a mere tool, or as an observational device, means
to greatly underestimate its potential. This brings me to a very
important point that I would like to make: the tendency to marginalize literature in cultural studies programmes is widespread
today2 even though if one looks with an unprejudiced eye at the
very nature of literature, and examines the reasons why it appeared in the first place, it becomes obvious that it serves an important practical purpose. More than one, in fact. Literature has
always helped people grapple with the ethical challenges of the
day. This is where ethical dilemmas are met and dealt with. As
Ian McEwan pointed out in an interview, “one of the privileges of
writing novels is to give characters views that you have fleetingly
but that are too irresponsible for you ever to defend. You can give
them to a character” (McEwan 2005).
188
The “use” of literature for the expression of ethically problematic perspectives on life and thus encouraging (self-)debates
on moral issues and “deepening our moral understanding and
development” (Schellekens 2007: 46) has been repeatedly emphasized by latter-day philosophers specifically concerned with
aesthetics and morality (45-8).
The sad thing is that this departure from literature could
have been avoided had the students and their lecturer adopted a
less mechanistic approach to the study of culture. Significantly,
some of the most authoritative voices within the context of cultural studies have argued against the exclusion of “elite” art
forms. Thus, Grossberg, Nelson, and Treichler write:
Cultural studies does not require us to repudiate elite cultural
forms . . . Rather, cultural studies requires us to identify the
operation of specific practices, of how they continuously reinscribe the line between legitimate and popular culture, and
of what they accomplish in specific contexts. (Grossberg et
al 1992: 13)
John Frow also suggests that academia may have had enough of
the exclusion of “literariness”:
There is no reason of principle why this exclusion should
continue to be sustained, and the time has now perhaps arrived for a rapprochement in which literary studies would
learn to attend in a more routine manner to the social relations of signification, and cultural studies would in its turn
be reminded of the constitution of its major explanatory
categories in practices of reading. (Frow 2005: 54)
Some critics are even more vocal and do not hide their strong
disapproval of what has come to be regarded as a dominant
paradigm within cultural studies. One of them is Valentine Cunningham who, in a 1998 article, levels searing criticism at it,
dismissing the need to pay extra attention to mass culture. He
points out that English studies have become a “service industry
within cultural studies, one seen as far less animating to the student mind than, say, film or the text of disco, football and shopping” (Cunningham 1998). He directly attacks Easthope, qualifying his assertions as “mongering untruths” and accusing him
of arguing against his own position:
189
Cultural studies is completely parasitic on English departments. Which has not stopped it trying to shrug off its parentage... The result has been a disenriched and skewed sense
of culture as merely modern, yoofie, fashionable, MTVwise, consumerist – and thus woefully short of imaginative
and explanatory power.
Another significant practical purpose served by literature is particularly well demonstrated by the legacy left by George Orwell.
When one reads him it is as if one is being personally addressed.
He seems to have a very transparent prose style that communicates itself partly because of his intellectual honesty and partly
because of – as it seems to me – a certain intuitive insight into the
hidden injuries of a given political system. In his short life he
managed to reveal the inequities of imperialism, Stalinism and
fascism. Many of his texts (especially his novels and short stories)
also indicate how a person can win their own battle against their
own prejudices, fears and bigotries (this is an excellent example
of how one can free oneself from the load of his/her “background
books”). He demonstrably managed to defeat his own racism
while he was serving in Burma and he fought a relentless battle
against what he perceived as his ideological weaknesses. Familiarizing oneself with Orwell’s texts and life would show literature
at its most pertinent to life: as a combination of the ethical and the
aesthetic. Orwell struggled hard against the ideological temptations offered by the above mentioned -isms. He did that, however,
in the public space provided by literature, which means that his
texts can still help readers deal with their own detrimental temptations. Attempting to emulate such honesty, integrity and refusal to
compromise would place an ethical imperative on Orwell’s readers to contribute to a more harmonious society.
At a time of intellectual development, however, many people
chose to bypass the challenges of literature, which is a troubling
trend. Sadly, the students at the University of Veliko Turnovo
during the 1990s were not encouraged to make a stand against this
tendency. If they had been prompted to resist it, they would have
obtained a much better grasp not only of British society but of
their own as well. Both the comparative approach to the study of
culture and systematic work with literary texts can facilitate the
tricky process of coming to terms with a particular foreign culture.
190
Notes
1
The meaning of terms such as "West" and "Western countries" may
vary within different contexts. In this paper I am using them to describe the countries situated to the west of the former European socialist block: most of Western Europe, as well as North America and Australia.
2
Cultural Studies Syllabus of the University of Southern California:
http://www-scf.usc.edu/~cplatt/Cultural_Studies_Syllabus.pdf
Cultural Studies Syllabus of the University of Minnesota (Department
of Communication Studies):
http://www.comm.umn.edu/~grodman/courses/usf/cultstud-fa99.html
Works Cited
Barthes, Roland. Roland Barthes. New York: Hill&Wang, 1977.
Bloom, Harold. “The Breaking of Form.” Deconstruction and
Criticism. Ed. Harold Bloom et al. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1979. 1-37.
Bloom, Harold, Paul De Man, Jacques Derrida, Geoffrey H.
Hartman, J. Hillis Miller, eds. Deconstruction and Criticism.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979.
Cunningham, Valentine. “They go to the disco, buy Jackie,
watch a vid, catch a soap, go to the match, have a fuck,
weep for Di, love k.d. lang ...” Times Higher Education
(Online version), 6 November 1998. 20 August 2009.
<http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?
storyCode=109786§ioncode=26>.
Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2008.
Easthope, Anthony. Literary into Cultural Studies. London:
Routlege, 1991.
Eco, Umberto. Serendipities: Language and Lunacy. Trans. William Weaver. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
Encyclopedia Britannica Online, 2009. 22 August 2009.
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/471865/
Positivism>.
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Fish, Stanley. Is There a Text in This Class?: The Authority of
Interpretive Communities. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980.
Frow, John. “On Literature In Cultural Studies.” The Aesthetics
of Cultural Studies. Ed. Michael Bérubé. Malden: Blackwell, 2005.
Gablik, Suzi. Has Modernism Failed? London and New York:
Thames & Hudson, 1984.
Grossberg, Lawrence, Nelson, Cary; Treichler, Paula. Cultural
Studies. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Hitchens, Christopher. Why Orwell Matters. New York: Basic
Books, 2002.
Hutcheon, Linda. The Politics of Postmodernism. New York:
Routledge, 1989.
McEwan, Ian. “The Salon Interview”, 2005. 20 August 2009.
<http://archive.salon.com/books/int/2005/04/09/mcewan/
index.html>.
Merriam Webster Online, 2009: Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. 20 August 2009.
<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/
logical+positivism>.
Natoli, Joseph and Linda Hutcheon, eds. A Postmodern Reader.
Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.
Polo, Marco. The Travels of Marco Polo, the Venetian. Ware:
Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1997.
Russell, Charles. “The Context of the Concept. ” A Postmodern
Reader. Ed. Joseph Natoli and Linda Hutcheon. Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1993. 287-299.
Schellekens, Elisabeth. Aesthetics and Morality. London: Continuum, 2007.
192
12
The Practice of Note Making, or Literacy
and the Study of English in Romania
Ana-Karina Schneider
Over the past century or so, English studies has distinguished
itself internationally by its insistence on ever new, critically reconsidered teaching and reading methods. The privileged status
of English as the lingua franca of scientific, technological and
media-based progress, and therefore a language to which people
have generous exposure in their day-to-day life, makes it both
easier and more difficult to teach English studies. Teaching it
tears down the walls of the classroom in unexpected ways, while
at the same time rendering information so easily available that
the very mission of teaching needs serious revision. It is amidst
such tensions engendered in and by the medium of English studies that I pursue my analysis of that most typical of student activities: making notes.1 I take the practice of making notes in the
undergraduate classroom to be an index of the various social,
cultural, economic, technological and pedagogic changes occurring in Romania over the past two decades. I propose however
that the transition from the traditional, four-year-long BA programmes to the Bologna system has not had an impact on this
practice. A much more significant transition is taking place in
the humanities, and English studies, due to its idiosyncratic
character, as well as its severally distinctive situation within the
humanities, is best equipped to reveal this shift. My aim is to
show that note making in the English class is productive of a
new definition of English studies that hinges on the EUregulated imperative that all language departments produce active, marketable language skills. To a large extent, the shift we
notice in the humanities, from defining that field alternately as a
research field or a set of social graces, to a field offering training
in communicative skills, international relations, and cultural di193
plomacy, is also a shift in the way in which literacy has come to
be defined.
In his “Presidential Address 2007: The Scandal of Literacy,”
Michael Holquist states of the members of the Modern Languages Association: “Whatever else we do, in one way or another – whether we teach in English or foreign language departments – we all concern ourselves with language. That is our
pride, and that is our problem, as it always has been for those
who profess the study of words” (Holquist 2007: 569). I take
this statement to be a most accurate and motivating formulation
of the mission of English studies teachers. The literacy that Holquist agonizes over is not merely the ability of attaching articulate sound or even dictionary meaning to graphical signs; it is
rather the skill of opening the world up for interpretation, of establishing cross-cultural, long-distance dialogues, of communicating across borders of all kinds. As such, literacy falls into
three categories: functional, critical and rhetorical, which perhaps in the Bologna scheme correspond to the three levels of
study respectively. It has further been classified according to the
medium in which it operates, as in computer literacy, visual literacy etc. Irrespective of such classifications, it is a more generic concept of literacy2 that is at stake in English studies: attention to what our students write or fail to write is an efficient
means of diagnosing their relationship not merely to the English
language and culture, but to their proposed field of expertise;
ultimately, it measures their ability to become alert, articulate,
efficient, critical professionals in their fields of choice, or, as the
New London Group has put it, to join their educators in becoming “active designers of social futures.”
Concerned by definition with issues of persuasion and rhetoric, the humanities more than the sciences build their own audiences and construct the epistemes they operate with;3 it is for
this reason that their development is so inexorably connected
with the tides and ebbs of ideologies. 1989 represented a radical
turning point in Romanian Higher Education, mainly by opening
it up to valuable, hitherto proscribed, exchanges with the western world, but also by freeing discourse from doctrinaire strictures. The two decades since have been an intensely dynamic
period, enabling changes in terms of pedagogic practice that re194
flect significant shifts in priorities and mentalities in Romanian
society. My paper aims to analyse, through the lens of classroom
practice, the adjustments in methodology and theoretical approach that have taken place in the teaching of English studies at
Higher Education level over the past decade or so.4 Increased
staff and student mobility, curricular revision, the commodification of knowledge, proliferation of higher education institutions
and massification of university degrees, along with technological progress, have, in turn, contributed crucially to changes in
student needs as well as in teaching methods. The recent abandoning of the practice of making notes in class in favour of being provided with teacher-compiled compendia and digests,
though described as symptomatic of the shift in focus from
teaching disciplines to teaching students, is, I argue, indicative
of the transition from HE addressing a carefully selected intellectual elite to making it widely accessible as a preparation for
new opportunities on the job market.
In what follows, I enquire into the social and cultural, as
well as academic, implications of routine procedures such as
circulating the teacher’s lecture notes among students, notetaking in class, PowerPoint presentations and networking activities that foreground the instrumental function currently attached
to knowledge. I also investigate ways in which they can be
turned to good account in developing active skills and habits of
mind. Knowledge-oriented teaching makes way for communicative and functional priorities as data is made readily available by
developments in information and communication technology;5 at
the same time, the teaching of language becomes more of an imperative under the sway of mass tertiary education that allows
students with only basic knowledge of the English language to
aim for a degree in English studies. The post-1989 evolution of
English studies has, moreover, been conditioned by a social dynamics shaped along lines that include local demographics, the
prestige of the HEI, job markets, availability of scholarships and
financial aid. Investigation of such issues and prospects is much
needed, followed by periodical curricular and institutional reform. I therefore interrogate the tenability of student-centred approaches that aim to respond to the individualised demands of
students with increasingly heterogeneous educational and cul195
tural backgrounds, while at the same time labouring under the
institutional pressure of being cost-effective: unlike cultural embeddedness, variable levels of literacy are not a learning resource. Proposing a multi-angled perspective on the everchanging pragmatics of the academic community, my paper is
partly based on classroom observation and responses to a questionnaire6 that I have circulated among a selection of the most
proficient of our students at one of the medium-size, comparatively older, universities in Romania.7
The complaint that students nowadays are inadequately prepared to enter HE is not uniquely Romanian. Marshall Gregory,
in his contribution to the MLA Profession 2008, notices the
same tendency in the American academe, especially among its
younger members, and recommends a very pragmatic solution,
in keeping with the consumerist age we live in: like the corporate marketers who descend into the agora to study its preferences before they devise strategies for creating new ones, we
must get to know the addressees of our teaching before we can
convince them to reciprocate with learning. The economic crisis
of the late 2008 and early 2009 however seems to suggest that
merely analysing our consumers is insufficient. There is, apparently, such a thing as macro-economy, whose definition as yet
eludes our best specialists, but whose dynamics overdetermines,
by limiting or expanding, our purchase power. In post-1989
Romania, macro-economy imposed its ruthless laws of supply
and demand in very unsubtle ways by allowing a plethora of
new HEIs to be established and doubtful university degrees to
proliferate; it also confirmed the paradox that during prosperous
periods in a nation’s history, when education is easily available,
learning becomes devalued, whereas in totalitarian regimes or
times of comparative poverty, learning is regarded as a much
coveted asset. Let us, then, first study the institutional impact of
these developments on already established universities, and investigate the ways in which the internal functioning of these
bodies has changed as a result.
The authorisation in recent years of a large number of tertiary-education institutions throughout the country has had complex consequences that are only now beginning to emerge. Coupled with a century low in demographic growth, this prolifera196
tion of universities, branch campuses and distance education
purveyors has resulted in a dilution of both the number of candidates and their competence, and older universities have found
themselves in the position of lowering admission standards if
they were to retain their allotted number of governmentsubsidised student places and survive financially. The ensuing
surfeit of university degrees have ceased to mean anything on an
already saturated job market. The appeal of a university degree
however has not decreased, and many a university has turned it
to good account. The example of Lucian Blaga University of
Sibiu is relevant in this respect. The university has opened a language centre offering foreign-language classes to customers
from the town as well as a distance education centre, has established Erasmus/Socrates exchange programmes with a variety of
universities abroad, and has admitted students from the Republic
of Moldova. The campus has definitely gained a new, rather more
cosmopolitan air, to which the best of our students, given now the
opportunity of studying abroad for a semester and then returning
to share their experiences, contribute significantly. The classroom,
on the other hand, has attained a previously unimaginable heterogeneity that bodes ill for high-minded notions of the academia as
a site for the encounter of intellectual elites and the nursery of tomorrow’s specialists, researchers and artists. A radical reconsideration of the role and definition of academia has become
de rigueur. Its triple-barrelled mission – teaching, research and
service – has suffered a rebalancing of its gravity centre, with the
supplying of services to the community gaining ever more weight.
One wonders, however, if in the long run the standardisation of
HE is indeed a form of democratisation.
The study of English in a non-native environment constitutes
a particularly relevant illustration of the changes undergone over
the past decade by the Romanian academia. While in the early
1990s English departments trained mostly teachers of the English language and literature, the privatisation process attracted
multinational corporations and with them an increasing demand
for translators, interpreters and language revisers. At the same
time, the decreasing financial attention afforded by government
to the educational system made teaching positions increasingly
undesirable for competent language specialists. Applied Modern
197
Languages departments and language classes became very popular, and this preference reverberated back to high and elementary
schools, where curricula were redesigned around language competence, effectively dropping literature lessons. One of the great
paradoxes of Romanian HE thus emerged: while everywhere in
English-speaking countries English studies means the study of
English literature and culture, in Romania only the language is
targeted as a means of communication between employer and
employee. A degree, diploma or certificate in English has become instrumental in pursuing the mirage of a job abroad or
with a multinational corporation.
The variable proficiency in English that students bring from
their respective schools, coupled with this pragmatic disinterestedness, is best evidenced by the way in which the exchange of
information takes place in the classroom. Fifteen or twenty years
ago most classes at university level still took the shape of traditional lectures,8 in which the professor delivered a monologic
presentation – more often than not, a summative or selective
survey of the material at hand – while the students very diligently strove to take down every word. Such lectures were
geared to offer highly sophisticated information and generate
analytic seminar discussions, taking for granted the students’
high proficiency in English and broad-ranging familiarity with
western culture and civilisation. The survey approach is still extensively practiced in many of our universities – in conspicuous
disregard of the much-mediatised canon wars of the west, but
justified by the relative lack of exposure of our students to the
historical and cultural circumstances that have conditioned crucial developments in literary and critical thinking in the Anglophone world. Nonetheless, the delivery method is considerably
altered, more interactive and communicative, and largely reliant
on compilations of texts, readers, handouts, and PowerPoint
presentations. The transition advocated by Paulo Freire, from the
“banking” concept of education to a dialogic approach, would
seem to have been effected, but it fails to yield the expected democratisation of outcomes.
Again, a complex set of factors, not all of them academic,
have determined this evolution. The academic factors have to do
with changing teaching methods in the English-speaking world,
198
brought to Romania mostly by British Council lecturers and
teacher trainers. In much-needed, much-enjoyed summer
schools, workshops and seminars in the 1990s, they introduced
student-centred approaches and activities that have helped do
away with the imaginary border between lectern and auditorium
and put a more collegial face on the professor-student relationship. They effected what might be called an enhanced awareness
that “what” we teach are students, not disciplines, and turned
English departments throughout the country into flagships in
teaching methodology. The non-academic factors include variables and contingencies that pertain to the students themselves:
despite the fact that instruction in the foreign languages in post1989 Romania starts in second form and sometimes in kindergarten (as opposed to the fifth form before 1989), the level of
student literacy in English is far from uniformly high nowadays.
As this renders uncertain the extent to which students can follow
the flow of information delivered orally, let alone make notes of
it, there has been increasing pressure on lecturers to make the
content of their lectures available in book format. Of late, the
number of lecture-note volumes published has become a ministerially-enforced criterion in promoting professors, virtually the
Romanian equivalent of the monograph in the British and
American academe. To a great number of students, the ready
availability of such learning aids has made note taking – a traditional language exercise whose efficiency had been tested by
countless generations – superfluous and potentially dangerous,
as it involves the risk of misspelling, misunderstanding, or mishearing words, and consequently committing to paper erroneous
data. Subliminally, the absence of the need to make notes in
class glides into the absence of any pressure to follow the presentation, especially during the lecture type of classes, in which
interaction is still minimal, the lecturer being the prime actor,
while students are expected to be mere recipients, if not receptacles, of data. The untrained attention span decreases as a consequence. Losing the habit of making notes entails, moreover, the
loss of valuable skills and habits of mind that would otherwise
have been practiced in the process of noting down information,
such as attention to details, skimming texts for the gist, synthesising, writing under dictation and spelling, but also the very
199
basic skill of handwriting. Similarly, lecture-note volumes, to
the extent to which they are compendia of the minimum information needed to pass exams, are not stimulative of either further reading or synthesising, and thus fail to produce knowledge
or competences beyond the salvific exercise of accumulating
credits. They also effect the abandonment of library research
practices and the ossification of the skills and habits of mind associated with it.
If ten or fifteen years ago libraries and television were the
only alternative sources of information for Romanian students,
the Internet has now become the paramount source not only of
knowledge, but of authority. This very significant shift, moreover, has a technical component that utterly defeats the traditional informative, rather than formative, goals of HE English
teaching. As the data can be easily and repeatedly retrieved
whenever needed, the imperative to store it in one’s memory
becomes redundant. Students now speak freely about the absurdity of trying to commit historical dates to memory, for instance,
when it is all available out there; they also speak, more worryingly, about the pointlessness of reading a 500-page novel, when
the five-page summary and brief critical comments are at the
tips of their fingers. The resistance to reading is, I suspect, of a
piece with the resistance to lectures: it is seldom determined by
any lack of interest in the content of the reading material itself,
and more often than not by a reluctance to deal with the special
demands of a foreign language subject to the strictures of art or
of a specialised field, whereas the internet provides reader digests in the reader’s own unsophisticated idiolect. What I find
most disturbing about this unquestioning reliance on the Internet
is that students ignore the fact that entries on popular sites such
as Sparknotes or Wikipedia are often written by students like
themselves, who may therefore not be better informed or more
reliable than they are. This credulous, implicit investment of
trust in the digitalised word, like the fascinated credulity towards
the mass-media displayed by most Romanians, pre-empts intellectual curiosity and learning, encouraging readers to remain in
an unquestioning state of ignorance and submission and writing
off the very mission of university. One wonders if this disregard
200
for authoritative knowledge will become a permanent outcome
of the transition from print culture to digital culture.
Other habits of mind induced by site hopping are equally
worrying. Unlike a book, which requires long-term commitment
to the logical development of an argument or plot, the internet
with its links and shortcuts stimulates what Katherine Hayles
calls “hyper attention” (in MLA 2007: 187 pass). According to
Hayles, this might in the long run prove to be an irreversible
cognitive shift originating, like the attention deficit disorder, in
the human brain’s increasingly common addiction to multiple
and varied stimulation.9 With current widespread multimedia
technology, enhanced hyper attention may in fact prove a useful
skill in many fields, such as CCTV supervision. To what extent
it may prove apposite in the humanities remains to be demonstrated. So far it has resulted mostly in a widespread reluctance
to sit down with a book and mull over it, make notes and write
response papers. It has also resulted in the restiveness that suffuses the classroom whenever the lecturer’s voice is the only
stimulus demanding attention for long stretches of time.
A significant advantage of the recent digital boom is, then,
the ever-wider availability of technology that can be used in the
classroom to replicate the “multimodal patterns of meaning” deployed by the media (New London Group, online reference).
Thus, PowerPoint presentations, blogs, forums, Yahoo dialogue
groups have become common tools at the lecturer’s disposal,
animating the lecture and prolonging the discussion outside the
classroom. However, as not all students in Romania have ready
access to computer technology and even less would choose to
participate in a school-related forum, outside-the-classroom
networking cannot be counted on to produce major improvements in students’ understanding of the subject or for evaluation
purposes – not even in the case of distance-education students.
On the upside of the fascination with digitalisation, rapid written
communication means such as text messaging, chatrooms, blogs
and Yahoo! Messenger supply students with very useful shorthand training that could be put to good use in note making. On
the downside, of course, such practices, compounded by the
growing unfamiliarity with handwriting, help students forget
good spelling and correct grammar, and sometimes turn their
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examination papers into illegible, ungrammatical gibberish.
Similarly, PowerPoint presentations, while answering the need
for a high level of cortical stimulation evidenced by some students, proves distracting and confusing to others, who have not
as yet developed the kind of multitasking skills necessary to extract the relevant information from the screen while the teacher
points it out orally.10 The presentation of information that was
once slowed down by the need to write names and dates up on
the blackboard is considerably sped up by OHP facilities, while
students must do listening and reading/ watching all at once; to
many the additional task of making notes becomes impossible to
pursue. While the visual media have reduced the time span necessary for the brain to recognise and decode an image from 20
seconds in the 1960s to 2-3 seconds in the twenty-first century
(Hayles in MLA 2007: 191), they do not seem to have the same
effect on the speed with which we recognise and process letters.
Hence the paradox, that although PowerPoint presentations are
initially received enthusiastically, they often prove ineffectual
when they are discovered to offer content notes or graphs rather
than images. Visual literacy thus appears to be quite as problematic as listening comprehension.
When queried closely, most students will admit that making
notes is the single most helpful class activity, as it contributes to
systematising information and helps them prepare for exams;
they will also profess that, like writing response papers, it is a
significant opportunity to jot down their own responses, doubts,
and queries, stay focused, and express themselves; and some
will even acknowledge notes as a useful and constant language
exercise. Many however will admit to a reluctance to write, a
latent, mild, yet spreading, form of graphophobia, generally justified by the fact that, in any case, the notes are available elsewhere, in a far better organised form. The outcome of this reluctance to use their own summarising powers to produce retrievable synopses is that, at best, students memorise information for
examination purposes, without understanding it or being able to
retain it for further reference. Consequently, classes turn into
tortuous hours that would be better spent elsewhere and evaluations fail to measure students’ proficiency in English or their
assimilation of the discipline’s content. Rather than develop an
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active understanding of and expertise in their chosen field of
study, in the absence of note-making habits students remain
mere temporary receptacles of information, largely incapable of
deploying it outside the examination room. Furthermore, unpractised abilities such as synthesising and assimilating information,
contextualising, reframing and responding to it in accordance
with one’s background, interests and proposed career, or with
examination requirements, slowly atrophy and are very seldom
and difficultly revived in later life. To take the long view, the
resistance to writing is conducive to massive inarticulacy,
which, to a university graduate, is the equivalent of illiteracy.
It is for reasons such as these that note making must remain
an important writing and learning exercise: along with composition and academic writing, although for rather different reasons
and to different ends, note making is a skill well worth preserving and practicing. English studies and humanities specialists in
the United States seem to have started a serious campaign in favour of resuming teaching Composition, English Literature 1, or
writing-intensive classes to all students regardless of their majors, as a means of implementing “academic literacy” (Slevin in
MLA 2007: 200 pass; also see Steiner in the same volume, Gold
in MLA 2008, Holquist etc.), that is, of teaching the single most
useful skill – that of forming cogent, well-rounded sentences and
arguing one’s point persuasively – and the most effective leveller of social and educational backgrounds. Student-centred
teaching, though always a noble desideratum, comes under siege
in the age of cost-effective HE and mass undergraduate education. It does so especially in medium-size universities like
Lucian Blaga, I feel, where students are tied down by compulsory classes and where disciplines spread very thin in the attempt to cover as vast a curricular range as possible. At best, this
approach to the curriculum makes for imperfect preparation for
any career that would make use of English studies, whether it is
in teaching or translating. At worst, it exposes the sheer impossibility of adapting literature or cultural studies classes to the
social and learning needs of such heterogeneous groups of students. Hence, the constant anxiety over “the changing profession.”
203
My concern here is, indirectly, with the question of what we
teach, ultimately. Marshall Gregory synthesises this question
very economically in the title of his contribution to Profession
2008: “Do We Teach Disciplines or Do We Teach Students?”
(Gregory 2008: 117). With the increasing pressure, in Britain,
the US, and Romania alike, to specialise and devote ever more
time to research and publishing, it has become difficult to remember that we do not merely teach disciplines but rather students, that the objects of our work are in fact complex, heterogeneous subjects. At the antipode, the current pressure to produce
employability is equally restrictive. The educational outcome we
must pursue is full social participation, and it is in producing this
outcome that humanities disciplines such as English studies are
crucial: they are facilitators of access and critical engagement. It
is therefore futile to define our profession by taking sides in the
canon wars: the canon may hold universal validity or it may be
restrictive, but it is equally void in the absence of the habits of
mind that decode and internalise canonical and non-canonical
works alike. Deborah Meier cites Gerald Graff’s indictment,
“Teach the conflicts” along with anti-canonical academics’
“Teach thinking skills” (in MLA 2007: 137), while she herself
pleads for the teaching of habits of mind (140). Whichever of
these three tendencies we follow, our students must leave school
having assimilated a number of competences (distributive attention, proficiency in English, articulacy, academic literacy, etc.)
and principles (open-mindedness, moral integrity, tolerance of
diversity) that confer on them the status of members of their
country’s intellectual and professional elites and mediators between local culture and global civilisation. For teaching to be
effective in the sense described by Gregory – i.e., for the information to be absorbed and in-formative – it is imperative, I
think, to surmount the language barrier. The “scandal of literacy” (Holquist 2008: 568) is that the language barrier is as insurmountable for native speakers as it is for non-natives; as Holquist puts it, “literacy is in its essence unnatural” (569). It is
therefore our duty as educators to keep such common practices
like note making under close observation, as they may reveal
crucial aspects concerning our own effectiveness, our students’
needs, and even concerning shifting cognitive modes.
204
Notes
1
Jim Burke distinguishes between “note taking” and “note making”:
“‘taking notes’ is passive: just as we must make meaning, so we must
make notes – in our head, on the page, and in our notebooks” (online
resource).
2
Or, rather, according to the New London Group, multiliteracies: “the
use of multiliteracies approaches to pedagogy will enable students to
achieve the... twin goals for literacy learning: creating access to the
evolving language of work, power, and community, and fostering the
critical engagement necessary for them to design their social futures
and achieve success through fulfilling employment” (online reference).
In my definition, literacy comes closer to the New London Group’s
definition of multiliteracies than to their “mere literacy,” as it comprises ability to read “modes of representation much broader than language alone. These differ according to culture and context, and have
specific cognitive, cultural, and social effects.” Nonetheless, I argue,
these modes of meaning-making impact language and share with it
both the role of establishing functional communication channels and,
increasingly of late, the propensity of indicating an individual’s employability and capacity for “full social participation” (NLG online
resource).
3
Cathy N. Davidson (2008) explains the role of the humanities as follows: “The humanistic turn of mind provides the historical perspective,
interpretive skills, critical analysis, and narrative form required to articulate the significance of the scientific discoveries of an era, show
how they change our sense of what it means to be human, and demarcate their continuity with or difference from existing ideologies” (707).
Showcasing foreign-language studies is therefore particularly revealing
in a post-communist context; the Bologna process itself is the product
of a new ideology.
4
I choose this time span for two reasons: firstly, as it covers roughly
my experience teaching in the field; secondly, as national economic
growth has triggered a number of essential, legal and internal modifications of the HE system in our country.
5
According to the New London Group, “the proliferation of communications channels and media supports and extends cultural and subcultural diversity. As soon as our sights are set on the objective of creating
the learning conditions for full social participation, the issue of differences becomes critically important” (online reference). The heterogeneity of the student body pursuing English studies in Romania is further complicated, to the ethnic, gender, and social differences being
205
added the widely ranging levels of their English competence, and it is
this latter circumstance that is pertinent to my approach.
6
Ensuing allusions to student responses and preferences are largely
based on a questionnaire made up of 11 open questions, with no suggested possible answers. 11 undergraduate and 5 MA students have so
far responded. What emerges is highly relevant to the issue of note
taking, but also to the ways in which current students understand their
work at HE level and their status as students, and to their attention
span, preoccupations etc. Thus, for instance, although the first 10 questions focus largely on study and teaching methods, when question no.
11 requires them to compare high school to university, several of the
respondents shift to aspects having to do with socialising, pressure to
be popular, autonomy from home and from imposed curricula, etc. The
endearing candour of the answers testifies to the students’ unguarded
honesty throughout, while it also reveals the priorities that shape their
undergraduate careers, of which not all are professionally oriented.
7
The University of Sibiu was founded in 1940 and then closed between 1945 and 1969, but Sibiu has had a tradition in tertiary education that dates back to 1786.
8
As Teresa Morell (2007) points out, research has proved the role of
lectures as “events that can be beneficial for the linguistic and communicative competence of second and foreign language students” (223).
This role is enhanced in the case of interactive lectures (224).
9
Hayles operates with the term “Generation M” coined in a report on
the impact of media on children aged between 8 and 18, commissioned
by the Kaiser Family Foundation (quoted MLA 2007: 189).
10
Recent empirical studies conducted by Savoy et al., Mann & Robinson, and Titsworth reveal similar results in native English-speaking
environments: although students prefer lectures that are accompanied
by PowerPoint presentations, they tend to retain less information from
them than from traditional, “chalk-and-talk” lectures.
Works Cited
Burke, Jim. “School Tools.” EnglishCompanion.com. 2009. 20
May 2009.
<http://www.englishcompanion.com/Tools/notemaking.html>.
Davidson, Cathy N. “Humanities 2.0: Promise, Perils, Predictions.” PMLA 123: (3) May (2008): 707-717.
206
Holquist, Michael. “Presidential Address 2007: The Scandal of
Literacy.” PMLA 123: (3) May (2008): 568-579.
Mann, Sandi and Andrew Robinson. “Boredom in the Lecture
Theatre: an Investigation into the Contributors, Moderators
and Outcomes of Boredom amongst University Students.”
British Educational Research Journal 35: (2) April (2009):
243-258.
Modern Languages Association. Profession 2007.
New York: MLA, 2007.
Modern Languages Association. Profession 2008.
New York: MLA, 2008.
Morell, Teresa. “What Enhances EFL Students’ Participation in
Lecture Discourse? Student, Lecturer and Discourse Perspectives.” The Journal of English for Academic Purposes 6
(2007): 222-237.
New London Group. “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing
Social Futures.” Harvard Educational Review Vol. 66 No. 1
(Spring 1966). 8 April 2009.
<http://wwwstatic.kern.org/filer/blogWrite44ManilaWebsite
/paul/articles/A_Pedagogy_of_Multiliteracies_Designing_
Social_Futures.htm>.
Savoy, April, Robert W. Proctor and Gavriel Salvendy. “Information Retention from PowerPoint and Traditional Lectures.” Computers and Education 52 (2009): 858-867.
Titsworth, B. Scott. “Students’ Notetaking: The Effects of
Teacher Immediacy and Clarity.” Communication Education
Vol. 53 No. 4, October (2004): 305-320.
207
13
The Re-trainees’ Programme
in English at the English and American
Studies Department at Sofia University
Madeleine Danova
The present paper looks at the changes in Bulgarian high school
education which have necessitated the inauguration of a oneyear intensive programme for retraining English language teachers at the Department of English and American Studies at Sofia
University. The programme has been devised as part of a project
for career development within the European framework for development of human resources. Special attention is paid to the
difficulties that people involved in the programme have to face
in dealing with such a great number of teachers who need retraining in such a short time. Another issue discussed is the possible ways of continuing the professional education of teachers
who have successfully completed the retraining programme in
MA Programmes offered by the Faculty of Classical and Modern Philology.
In the last four years there has been a consistent effort to devise a National Programme for a Reform in Secondary Education as an indispensible part of the National Strategy for the Development of Education by the Ministry of Education and Science in Bulgaria. The Programme is based on the Education for
All movement, which took off at the World Conference on Education for All in 1990 in Jomtien, Thailand. There the World
Declaration on Education for All was adopted which defined an
entirely new direction in education. It declared the end of traditional, prescriptive education systems and hailed education that
would be tailor-made, answer the needs of learners and be
adaptable to their cultural and social contexts.
At the Conference it was also decided to review progress after a decade, which culminated in the organizing of the World
209
Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal in April 2000. Before that a
report to UNESCO of the “International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century” was prepared. This report
urged governments, non-governmental organizations, civil society, bilateral and multilateral donor agencies and the media to
start promoting a holistic view of education based on four “pillars”: learning to know, learning to do, learning to be and learning to live together. In an attempt to further that goal, the Dakar
Framework for Action “Education for All: Meeting Our Collective Commitments” was adopted.
This document calls for the achievement of quality basic
education for all by 2015, setting six goals, one of which is directly connected to quality – it asks for the strengthening of the
recruitment, deployment and motivation of teachers in order to
ensure that there are enough qualified teachers in all regions and
schools, especially in remote and underserved communities.
This has remained as one of the major tasks in the EFA Global
Monitoring Report 2009, too. And although Bulgaria ranks high,
at the 48th place among the 129 countries monitored by this last
report, when looking at the statistical data for education of the
UNESCO Institute for Statistics from January 2008 (Database of
Integrated Statistical Activities) there is one striking omission –
there is no data for the percentage of trained teachers in the data
for Bulgaria.
All that, together with the fact that more than 11 per cent of
the students in Bulgaria never finish their secondary education,
has made a change in the school system in Bulgaria a must. Two
major ways have been proposed: changing the school structure
and offering training programmes for the teachers so that a system of stratified payment can be introduced.
The proposed new structure of Bulgarian education includes
compulsory primary education from the first to the fourth grade
and then from the fifth to the seventh grade. After the seventh
grade all students will have to sit for a test and get a diploma to
go either to the first level of professional education or to the first
level of high-school education. After graduating from the tenth
grade they could leave the school system, obtaining a certificate
or diploma for secondary education. That is seen as a way of
synchronizing the education system and the law requires a com210
pulsory stay within the education system for all students till the
age of sixteen. But since the system in operation now does not
give any opportunity for leaving school at that age, the rate of
drop-outs has increased substantially in the last few years to
reach, according to some of the mass media, a quarter of the
number of all students, despite the fact that according to a report
on the major statistical characteristics of Bulgarian education in
2008 the percentage of the drop-outs decreases and if it was
21.4% in 2004, in 2007 it was 16.6%, while in 2008 it reached
15.3% (Osnovni statisticheski harakteristiki 1).
If after graduating from the tenth grade students opt for continuing their education on the next level, which is not compulsory, they would study for two more years graduating with a diploma, which would open to them the way to university.
The most important change in the secondary education,
however, is the idea that in the eighth grade one year of intensive study of foreign languages and information technologies
will be undertaken for all. High schools with a curriculum predominantly based on the humanities will have 17 classes of foreign language study per week. Schools where the natural sciences dominate the curriculum will have 15 classes of foreign
languages per week, while professional schools will have 6
classes per week.
It is obvious that if the system starts operating from the
2009/2010 school year, the demand for teachers in foreign languages and especially in English would soar. According to some
of the estimates, there will be 3,359 classes in the eighth grade
during this school year and they need 3,241 qualified teachers in
English to cover the needs of all the high schools only for this
grade. All in all 6,052 qualified teachers in FLs will be needed
for the whole secondary education system in Bulgaria once this
system starts operating. According to a report prepared several
years ago, there were 7,862 teachers in foreign languages in the
educational system but 2,427 were without the required qualifications. (Spravka za gotovnostta 4). That was one of the major
reasons for the launching of the Project for Retraining of Teachers in Foreign Languages in 2007.
Another important reason is connected with the tasks set by
the European Union for improvement of the teachers’ qualifica211
tion within the European Qualifications Framework for Lifelong
Learning. The document which gives a good understanding of
the rationale behind this Framework is The Helsinki Communiqué on Enhanced European Cooperation in Vocational Education and Training from December 2006, which reviews the priorities and strategies of the Copenhagen Process. The two most
important aspects of this process are first the need to invest in
human capital and skills since:
Education and training have a central role in responding to
the challenges we are facing in Europe: globalization, an
ageing population, emerging new technologies and skills
needs. It calls for expansion and improved investment in
human capital and for adaptation of education and training
systems in response to the challenges. (2)
Second, it gives priority to Vocational and Education Training
(VET) as an integral part of lifelong learning since it:
plays a key role in human capital accumulation for the
achievement of economic growth, employment and social
objectives. VET is an essential tool in providing European
citizens with the skills, knowledge and competences needed
in the labour market and knowledge based society. (2)
In order to support the evaluation, monitoring and quality
improvement of VET systems and providers, th Proposal for a
Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council
on the establishment of a European Quality Assurance Reference Framework for Vocational Education and Training
[SEC(2008) 440][SEC(2008) 441] (Brussels, 9.4.2008,
COM(2008) 179, final 2008/0069) gives six indicators among
which are investment in training of teachers and trainers and
utilisation of acquired skills at the workplace. The first one
measures the share of teachers and trainers participating in further training and the amount of funds invested. Since this refers
to the overall policy of the national governments, for the Project
carried out at Sofia University more important is the policy rationale behind this indicator which is directed towards increasing the individual learning capacity building and improving the
learner's achievement. The other indicator aims to monitor the
way in which the employability of teachers will be increased:
212
this is measured by information on the occupation qualification
obtained by individuals after completion of training, according
to type of training and individual criteria as well as by the satisfaction rate of individuals and employers with acquired
skills/competences. This has been one of the major considerations in the carrying out of the Project, since it is envisaged as an
integral part of a new career-development system that must be
introduced in Bulgarian education closely linked to the proposed
pay-rise based on a horizontal system of five levels of professional qualification.
The Programme has been designed as a one-year intensive
study in English Language and Culture, which was carried out
over the weekends and during school and official holidays. The
teachers were not allowed to take leave from work, which put an
additional stress on them. The Programme started in January
2008 and ended in December 2008 with two state exams. A substantial grant was received for financing the Programme from
the Ministry of Education, as part of the Human Resources Development Funds allocated to Bulgaria by the European Union.
Thus the participants did not have to pay for their training, travel
expenses, accommodation and per diem.
The greatest number of classes is naturally reserved for English as a foreign language, 300 classes. After a test for defining
the level of English of each of the 1010 candidates, all of whom
were teachers from different levels of the education system, only
those who showed a level of English roughly equal to B1 (as set
by European Framework of References for Language Competences) were considered and 545 candidates were finally admitted to take part in the Programme. Out of them, only 155 were
teachers from the schools in the capital, Sofia, while the others
came from all over the country, including teachers from regions
with a dominant minority population (Turkish, Bulgarianspeaking Muslims, and Roma) and remote and under-served
communities. For the English classes we used the Headway system of Oxford Press, Intermediate and Upper-Intermediate levels, with additional materials for translation and grammar practice.
The other courses included in the Programme are Theoretical English Grammar (30 classes), English Phonetics and Pho213
nology (24 classes), British Culture and Literature (48 classes),
American Culture and Literature (48 classes), Teaching Methods
in Foreign Language Education (30 classes), The New Information Technologies in Foreign Language Teaching (20 classes),
School Teaching Practice (20 hours), Educational Bills and Acts
in Bulgaria (10 classes). The course ends with two state exams:
a written one with practical and theoretical parts, and a translation-based oral one. Out of the total number of teachers included
in the Programme, 121 were unable to graduate from the first
round and had to re-sit the state exams.
The major problems the teaching staff at the Department encountered were primarily connected with the low level of English language competence some of the teachers had and the fact
that in many of the schools in smaller towns and villages teachers in other subjects were asked to take the English language
classes without any experience in teaching a foreign language or
any solid basis of English language competence. In this sense, it
has become clear that all these teachers need further training and
new programmes that would add to the basic knowledge they
have received in the retraining programme.
In order to measure the satisfaction rate of the teachers who
participated in the Programme a survey was carried out among
half of the re-trainees. It showed that their greatest need was in
having more practical experience of English and more opportunities to learn about the use of the new technologies in foreign
language teaching. That initiated the designing of a new MA
Programme, “Communication: Language Skills, Literary Competence, Media Literacy,” at the Department, specifically geared
towards the needs of secondary-school teachers in English.
The MA Programme looks at communication from the perspective of the interaction between literature and the media in
the globalizing world of computers and the Internet. It aims at
introducing participants to the different facets of the study of
communication – as a theoretical issue, as a pedagogical and
practical tool and as an artistic phenomenon in the highly technologized world of the last century and the cyber world of today.
It offers a better knowledge of the way literature has become
part of the world of electronic communication, of the processes
of blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction. It also pro214
vides the practical skills necessary for future career development
in our “global village,” including an opportunity to develop second language competence further and become more media literate, as well as more sensitive to the issues of intercultural communication. At the same time it makes it possible to specialize in
the relatively neglected field of teaching a foreign language literature in secondary schools. Some of the courses are taught by
native-speakers, some of them Fulbright lecturers and instructors.
The most important feature of the MA Programme is that it
caters for students who are not English and American Studies
BA graduates but come from other literature, language, culture
and history study fields and have a good command of English or
have successfully completed the re-training programme for
teachers in English at the Department. They go through an introductory module which helps them get fully immersed into the
field of English and American Literary Studies, combined with
an intensive English language course. The other important asset
of the programme is that it is taught on a part-time basis and
some of the courses are offered as e-courses or as part of Summer School programmes.
The thirty teachers who enrolled in this MA Programme last
year were all graduates of the Retraining Programme and they
believe that the MA diploma will give them better opportunities
for career development. The problem is that at the government
level no incentive is offered for such teachers. Moreover, what
we have encountered during the implementation both of the Retraining Programme and the MA Programme, which is not part
of the Ministry of Education and Science projects for career development within the European framework for development of
human resources and is self-funded by the participants, is a relatively large number of cases in which instead of increasing the
employability of teachers who have successfully completed the
Retraining Programme and have enrolled in the MA Programme,
they have been made redundant because of decrease in the number of students in schools. This shows that there is still a long
way for Bulgaria to go in becoming a society and an economy
based on knowledge, in which life-long learning will be as valuable as the more formal kinds of education.
215
Works Cited
Education for All: Meeting Our Collective Commitments. World
Education Forum Dakar, Senegal, 26-28 April 2000.
5 Sept. 2009.
<http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001202/120240E.pdf>.
Database of Integrated Statistical Activities. 15 Sept. 2009.
<www1.unece.org/stat/platform/.../1.3+Education+
(Eurostat)>.
European Quality Assurance Reference Framework for Vocational Education and Training [SEC(2008) 440][SEC(2008)
441] Brussels, 9.4.2008, COM(2008) 179, final 2008/0069.
Osnovni statisticheski harakteristiki na obrazovanieto. [Basic
Statistical Characteristics of Education] 15 Sept. 2009.
<http://www.nsi.bg/SocialActivities/Education08.pdf>.
Spravka za gotvnostta za vuvezhdane na chuzhdoezikovo
obuchenie v nachalniya etap na osnovnata obrazovatelna
stepen prez uchebnata 2002/2003 [Report on the level of
preparedness for FLL introduction into the primary compulsory school system for 2002-3], Ministry of Education and
Science, National Institute for Education. 15 Sept. 2009.
<http://www.see-educoop.net/education_in/pdf/
gotovnost_rhco-bul-blg-t05.pdf>.
The Helsinki Communiqué on Enhanced European Cooperation
in Vocational Education and Training. Helsinki, 5 December 2006. 25 July 2009.
<http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/2010/doc/
helsinkicom_en.pdf>.
World Declaration on Education for All. World Conference on
Education for All, Jomtien, Thailand, UNESCO, 1990. 5
Sept. 2009.
<http://www.unesco.org/education/pdf/JOMTIE_E.PDF>.
216
14
Access and Equity Issues Engendered by
Participation in English Language Study
Programmes in Romanian Universities
Silvia Florea
Until recently, equity was mechanically associated with the massification of higher education. That is not the case anymore:
whether higher education systems are elitist, massified or universal (Trow 1974), they are increasingly expected reflect a society’s democratic organization, and widening access accordingly becomes an issue of social justice which contributes to social cohesion. These Higher Education (HE) systems are required to provide a more diverse student body with educational
opportunities and to admit more than the traditional offspring of
the national elite in the most prestigious institutions. While the
expansion of access has traditionally been valued as a tool to
increase individual benefits as well as social benefits, this assumption is challenged today, and studies argue that massification in itself does not reduce inequalities but only displaces them
(Wolf 2002, Duru-Bellat 2005). The South African Higher Education system in particular illustrates this shift, where recent
policies attempt to widen the student body without enlarging
access (Goastellec 2008). Therefore, increasing access is not a
universal goal anymore. Widening access becomes the ultimate
target: HE mediates the association between origin and destination, and this mediation is increasingly under scrutiny.
In this study I argue that over-enrolment in English Language Study Programs (ELSP) in Romania over the last two
decades has indeed increased student access but has not widened
it. From this perspective, parental education, income, gender and
academic preparation have had a strong influence on disadvantaged groups. Access problems for ELSPs therefore can be predominantly referred back to social selection processes in pri217
mary and secondary education. The main general difficulties,
examined as barriers to widening access in these programs will
be pursued horizontally on low income groups and students from
rural areas and ethnic groups as well as longitudinally in terms
of financial, institutional and individual levels. The financial
barriers in question are of costs, payment of fees and the pressure associated with loans, bursaries and credit constraints; institutional barriers concern disparities of students’ enrolment,
admissions procedures and a general lack of institutional flexibility (in terms of a still noticeable organizational resistance to
change and persistence in traditional assessment procedures);
and individual barriers include individual motivation, attitudes
to learning and a poor perception of the humanities for careers.
Financial barriers
There are many sources of inequity and, in the implementation
of equality of opportunity in access, funding has been perceived
as a tool to compensate for socioeconomic handicaps, and thus
lead to widening access. The cost-sharing rationale (mainly the
split of the costs between public authorities, students, and families) is on the agendas of Romanian HE institutions and policy
makers as a result of the international trend to make students
bear part of the cost of their studies (see, e.g., Johnstone 1986,
2000, 2001) through tuition fees, whether they are up-front or
repayable. Up-front fees are balanced by grants and more recently loans, aimed at widening access. However these tools
have had a limited impact on the steering of access in ESLP institutions for they do not make these institutions accountable for
whom they register and for who graduates. Along with the added
costs these institutions have to bear when they register “at-risk”
students, the Romanian Ministry of Education is using funding
incentives through institutions to widen access mainly by indexing part of the institutional funding against the characteristics of
the students registered.
As a result of these policies, Romanian universities have devised a series of measures meant to encourage and assist minority and poor students to receive higher education. Students with
financial difficulties are entitled to apply for financial assistance
which may be obtained in the form of scholarships, grants-in218
aid, student loans, work-study, living allowance, etc. A positive
correlation between family income and higher education participation was intended with the development of the private HE institutions system for those who could afford higher tuition
schemes and fee-for-service programs. However, more and more
educators claim that the private sector in Romanian HE is slow
(due to the still persistent popular “ideology” of free higher education), has corrupted the notion of “learning” in a great number
of its low-quality institutions, and is discriminatory because rising prices has created access problems for low-income students.
The equity of the access to education was affected by the transfer of educational costs upon the population. This transfer has
diminished the possibility of having equal opportunities of access to university education. According to the EFA Country Report (2000), the inflation process, the general decrease of living
standards along with “the developing asymmetry between public
education offer and the private one, whose access is conditioned
by costs that go far beyond the possibilities of a common family,
have also contributed to reducing equal opportunities and equitable access.”
More to the point, for the ELSPs, during the last two decades
the costs of HE have gradually been shifting from the university
to the students and their families. The level of funds available to
students through the student support system can still be considered to be a barrier to access or widening participation. Lack of
certainty about access to discretionary funding was found to act
as a deterrent to participation. Indeed, the relatively low level of
participation from lower-income groups shows that cost is a barrier, in which case removal or reduction of the costs should lead
to increased participation from lower-income groups. This is, in
fact, the logic underlying grants, scholarships, but these approaches do not seem to work differentially well for the groups
for whom they are intended, thus pointing to the need to review
funding locally (institutionally). One such example is represented by students’ bursaries: although the next bursary instalment is always dependent on the successful completion of the
previous semester, there is a risk that the funding may not go
towards the desired uses, especially if a student drops out of a
course or has failed exams. To date, however, the risk has paid
219
off and any decision to make the scheme more bureaucratic
could backfire. Also, the complexity of student funding can
make the interpretation of information difficult. Moreover,
forthcoming changes to fees and student funding are likely to
further increase the overall stress and complexity of the financial
decisions facing HE entrants in ELSPs. In all fairness, the system of hardship/social grants has not equalized finances across
students, but the award of a bursary or scholarship can be credited to have had some positive psychological impact by way of
somewhat reducing students’ fear of scarcity of funds and debt.
One of the recent Romanian Ministry of Education policies
for improving access and removing barriers to participation involves a new focus on student short-term credit opportunities.
Although these opportunities have been created as joint bankeducational support schemes and have been encouraged in the
media, the short-term credit constraints seem to impact adversely on educational choices, particularly at the end of compulsory high schooling. Johnstone (2001, 2004) notes that student populations requiring need-based financial assistance are
usually those with low income, low levels of parental education,
and little family history of borrowing, which means that governments must guarantee or subsidize loans to students in order
to keep the interest rates sufficiently low to encourage student
borrowing. A cross-sectional analysis on a pool of students at
the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu (LBUS) considered across
their study years shows that student participation rates across the
parental income distribution are significantly higher than those
across state support distribution (Florea, forthcoming). In all
cases observed, the amount of debt and costs supported by parents until graduation is significantly high, with a distinction between the levels of debt of disabled students, students from rural
regions and those from working-class backgrounds which are
below expectations. Furthermore, when it comes to short-term
loan opportunities, Romania has a long history of aversion to
loans of any kind, which means that the government will need to
fund either a generous need-based grant programme or a
stronger student loan programme. Both seem to be difficult to
achieve, particularly because so far banks have been unreliable
and are even viewed at times as corrupt. Additionally, interest
220
rates have been high and the period of repayment on loans is
typically very short. These conditions have allowed for more
room on the government’s part to provide subsidies to students
and lending institutions. A direction to be explored in the coming years would be the development of a direct lending system
run by a government agency to keep interest rates extremely low
and to ensure that monthly repayments stay low. In other words,
widened access can be achieved as a result of a serious change
in the mentality of a mistrustful citizenry that lacks a tradition of
relying on loans for most consumer activities, along with ensuring a longer period of currency and banking stability and greater
confidence in the government.
Institutional barriers
In a relatively short number of years, and stimulated by the economic conditions of the 1990s, the enrolment proportions of students in ELSPs increased significantly, from 4,159 in 1990/1991
to 37,682 in 2006/2007, which is more than a nine-fold registered increase (INS 2008). However, despite this progressively
huge enrolment, the distribution of students from rural areas,
across regions and lower income families decreased while those
of students from urban areas and higher income families increased, indicating that the enrolment gap among students from
different socioeconomic background has been growing (INS
2008).
With regard to admission processes, they represent the hidden side of access and the very socio-technical tools which are
aimed at organizing student influx to ELSPs. Here too, there is
an increasingly complex reading of inequalities which is even
more difficult to assess as the same goal can be pursued through
different admission processes which can be continuously readapted as unexpected effects are manifested. In ELSP institutions, admission is granted on the basis of academic qualifications, entrance examinations and/or high school performance.
Special favourable policies and allowances are made for Roma
applicants, Moldavian applicants and outstanding students. In
1998, the Ministry of Education started implementing an education consolidation programme and launched several special, affirmative, anti-discrimination programmes. It included the fol221
lowing measures: 150 places were set aside annually in universities for young Roma for the purpose of training them as teachers, elementary schools teachers, social assistants, in Roma language and culture, law and political science. 85% of the places
were occupied that year (Ringold 2000). Yet the problems generated by admission policies based on credentials and their relationship to merit, especially when associated with privatization
and market-like forces, become even more complicated. Along
with the other specializations, ELSPs chose to rely on numerical
criteria as one set of factors in admissions because they were
thought to be somewhat helpful, though by no means perfect, in
predicting future academic performance of entrants.
In retrospect, after a decade-long experience, no sensible
ELSP admissions officer would nowadays pretend that the
grades and scores considered as credentials of applicants are the
only or “true” components of merit. Reducing an individual’s
accomplishments and potential to “a number” has compelled our
faculties to ignore motivation, competence, maturity and many
language qualifications which are not (or hardly) reflected by
any high school graduation standardized test scores or grades.
For these academic programmes, as well as elsewhere, such
problems arising from too lax an admission policy, based on
credentials and its relative relationship to merit, have been consistently ignored since the 1990s. Indeed, until a few years ago
such a credentials-based admissions policy was regarded as strategically good because it allowed for good temporary institutional functioning while showing an open, meritocratic distribution of credentials. However, according to Calhoun (2006), although such a credential inflation resulting from expanded access apparently implies more open and meritocratic distribution
of existing credentials, in fact, it calls for an urgent reconsideration of prestige differentiations among apparently identical credentials.
Among the several disadvantages noted in locally devised
entrance examinations, which may lead to failures in ensuring
access and equity, we should note regional barriers. There is a
dearth of information available to students, but the farther students live from the institution they wish to attend the less information and less access they are likely to have about the admis222
sions exam and what it takes to succeed. In addition to this, students and their families must also be able to afford to travel to
distant locations for admissions exams. Students who live close
to HE institutions can often avail themselves of test tutoring,
while students at more distant locations do not have these opportunities. It can be argued in this respect that the development of
private HE as an alternative to the public one has led to an increase in the number of university centres, and geographical accessibility has been much improved. However, student enrolment is considerably higher in public universities because of the
high standards they have been striving to maintain over the
years.
There is also a mindset barrier associated with Englishlanguage study, but not limited to them, known as “coaching,”
“tutoring” or “parallel education”.
Coaching represents a private supplement to education that
follows the state education and consists of preparing (coaching) pupils privately, in most cases individually, through
supplementary lessons given by teachers or persons with
higher qualifications, paid directly by the family. (EFA
country report 2000)
In the past coaching has determined by and large the degree of
success or failure of students in entrance examinations, whether
before 1989 when admission was determined solely by a national examination or in the 1990s when a theoretical entrance
examination was administered by universities. Over the last decade, even though the admission criteria have changed and rested
exclusively on students’ high school performance, coaching
practices have not disappeared. They have been transferred to
the high school period, during which the dose of extra teaching
is understood as necessary for obtaining better high school
grades that will later be considered as admission criteria by universities. Obviously, coaching, considered to be “the spontaneous regulation of the quality of education” (EFA 2000), contributes to the polarization of education by social distinctions and
narrows the access to education of students coming from low
income families. Some even speak about schools “undermining”
the admissions process, and recent educational policies have
tried to make public education a sufficient basis for getting ac223
cess to high schools and universities. This private supplement to
education was perpetuated by inertia and fed by the old elements
that persisted in the university admission requirements for well
over a decade (between 1990 and 2000). The old curriculum
used to focus on transmission and reproduction of a large quantity of knowledge. With the recent emphasis on a new paradigm
in learning, that is, shifting the emphasis from reproductive to
problem-solving education and formative evaluation, parallel
private coaching has almost disappeared at tertiary level. But it
remains a widespread practice at high school level and below.
Special emphasis will be laid on sustainable knowledge as well
as on acquisition of general knowledge during high school with
specialization occurring later in the interactive teaching-learning
process at university level.
Besides the aforementioned problems, inequity in the present
admission system to ELSPs appears to be exacerbated by other
factors. Applications for admissions show regional disparities and
can be limited to a relatively small number of students because of
the cost and distance of travel to the entrance examination venues:
for example, the ELSPs at LBUS, on a three generation analysis,
have had a good 60 percent of enrolled students coming from Oltenia, mainly from the Dolj, Gorj and Valcea counties, showing
that admission information was more available and widespread
across those regions. Likewise, for roughly the same reasons, students graduating from high schools located in rural areas or with
low standards in learning are obviously at a greater disadvantage
than the graduates from well reputed high schools, located in major cities. And finally, the present system provides notoriously
ample opportunities for baccalaureate exam corruption, dishonest
assessment and exam administration, all of which are affecting the
quality of the enrolled cohorts of students.
I maintain that criteria for admissions, and correlatively high
quality selection, remain an important indicator for the prestige
of all ELSPs and should therefore be reconsidered at its most
essential points: accessibility to large geographical distances,
clear admission requirements, objective measurement of admissions applicants, etc. Perhaps expansion of access to Romanian
HE can be further increased by replacing the existing procedures
and by returning to applying a unified state examination. It can
224
be a high-stakes admission test, similar to the SAT in the US,
and at the same time it can be a nationwide objective measurement of admissions applicants which will replace the inconclusive high-school exit exams and most single-university admissions interviews or tests in place. It remains to be clarified which
subjects need to be tested for entrance into which HE institutions, and whether the requirements for such a national test indeed need to be standardized, and whether all Romanian HE institutions will accept such a test for determining admissions.
Such an admissions system could not only make a significant
advance in the attempt to widen access and equity in HE admission policies, but could also restore the quality and Europe-wide
recognition our teaching system used to have.
Another barrier to access is represented by a general lack of
institutional flexibility. This is reflected in a certain organizational
resistance to change, noticeable throughout the last two decades
of development. Starting in 1989, various attempts to challenge
conservatism in English-Language Study departments have met
with resistance because they effectively challenged aspects of the
ongoing renewal of academic makeup. Despite these indications
of resistance the mainstream was nonetheless in favour of change,
so that today we can say that quality assurance in academic programmes have shaped the present day position of ELSPs for the
better. This is noticeable in the way in which they have begun to
respond to the needs of the emerging market economy by changing programme content, readjusting the size of programmes, and
building in more flexibility. New fields of study, such as business
and modern macro and micro-economics were introduced, while
other areas were removed. Over-specialization and overenrolment have been counteracted by the introduction of interdisciplinary programmes. Flexibility has been increased through the
introduction of short programmes, retraining programmes and
continuing education. Quality of faculty is being upgraded
through the development of postgraduate programmes to train the
next generation of academic staff, while the National University
Research Council is funding the development of new postgraduate programmes and related research.
However, in many ELSP institutions, more notably in the
less credible private universities, knowledge is stored in inacces225
sible academic journal articles written for the approbation of a
handful of colleagues or simply for a line on a vita. Opportunities to do research are treated not as a public trust but more as a
reward for previous studies, and the research itself is too often
treated as a new means to promotion rather than as an opportunity to benefit others. Too often, there is more investment to protect the autonomy of disciplines than to develop knowledge in
interdisciplinary projects or ensure the wider circulation of
knowledge. However, across the sector mechanisms for quality
assurance are being constantly strengthened, and accountability
for maintaining standards has been achieved through the periodic review of programmes as provided for in the Accreditation
Law Standards. Incentives for quality improvements at both the
undergraduate and postgraduate levels have been introduced
through competitive grants for programme innovation, and research and public expenditures have been allotted to make up for
past neglect by increasing resources to development, innovations
and capital investment. Postgraduate ELSPs have been concentrated in only a few selected institutions so that resources could
be more focused on developing high quality programmes.
Conventional assessment procedures can be regarded as another form of institutional inflexibility. ELSPs have had to adapt
their assessment methods so as to cater to the diverse educational backgrounds of students. Although progress has been
made in this respect, there is still enough evidence that in certain
institutions the emphasis is still on students learning to adapt in
HE. Indeed, students need to adjust themselves in engaging the
teaching practices of English studies, and a good many of them
have reported mismatched expectations of the teaching and
learning methods that they found in HE. Among students, a
sense of discontent enhances the idea that the methods they had
been taught previously in high schools were no longer appropriate and could give them little preparation for HE learning. Likewise, in my own English department at least, there seems to be
little evidence of teachers adapting their assessment methods to
cater for the diverse educational backgrounds of students; rather,
the pressure is on students to learn to cope with the difficulty of
HE teaching methods and assessments. In this direction, varying
the forms of assessment may work for the benefit of all students
226
– including, in the sense of widening participation for underrepresented groups, for those comfortable with a wider range of
methods (such as disabled students). Students with disabilities
have often reported difficulty with conservative assessment
methods. These often pose particular challenges for students
with dyslexia and unseen disabilities, blind and partially-sighted
or deaf and hearing-impaired students, wheel chair users and
students with mobility difficulties. The teaching context which is
most problematic for those with disabilities is lectures, where
barriers may include the number of slides presented, the lack of
a break, the speed of course delivery, the difficulties of listening/watching and speedy note taking.
Individual barriers
Individual student barriers can take various forms and pose varying degrees of pressure. An individual’s motivation and attitudes
to learning is such a barrier. The student’s motivation to learn is
related to personal values and aspirations, material rewards for
completing the course, and perhaps the political significance and
degree of success of their collective efforts. Also, the poor perception of some fields in terms of careers can impinge on access
and affect rates of participation.
The percentage of total student enrolments in public and private higher education represented by programmes in Economics, Law, and the Humanities has risen from 61.7 percent in 1996 to 67.5 percent in 2004. In private higher education, enrolments have also heavily skewed towards Economics, Law, and the Humanities, which represented 94.2
percent of total enrolments in private higher education in
2004. Among the most required fields of studies, the trend is
rising in Economics and the Humanities, but is on the decrease in Law, while the percentage of both Law and Humanities private enrolments in the total field of enrolments
decreased. (Korda and Nicolescu 2007: 367)
There has been a rapid increase in numbers of new disciplines
which offer strong employment opportunities for degree-holders.
After 1989, such opportunities have fluctuated wildly over time,
alternatively, engineering, physics, computing, psychology, jour227
nalism, and law offered careers of mass choice. Engineering became unpopular after many industries closed down in the course
of the 1990s, but regained popularity in the early 2000s after the
new boom in industry (communications, metal industry, chemical
industry, etc.) and construction. Law became popular in the 1990s
because of a lack of trained professionals in the field, but has been
less so since 2000 because of an excess of law graduates. The social sciences have been consistently popular since 1989, since
they were unavailable during communist times. Different disciplines will inevitably hold positions of greater or lesser institutional influence and appeal. In Romania the most prestigious now
are faculties of economics and law. These disciplines often have a
very different concept of research, funding and scholarship than
that of disciplines within the humanities.
In both the private and public HE sectors a stronger orientation toward the student market rather than the labour market can
be observed. Disciplines which require low infrastructure costs
and little investment – “as determined by student demand and
market logic” or “resource dependency theory” (Amaral et al.
2007: 637) – are the winners in current popularity stakes. In addition to this rising tide of philistinism, some scholars might be
tempted to agree with Stanley Fish, who infamously asserted that
humanities “cannot be justified except in relation to the pleasure
they give to those who enjoy them” (Paquette 2009:1). Universities, particularly institutions with ELSPs, have faced both shortages and over-capacity, since the job market was very turbulent in
the 1990s. Ideally, a balance between the ELSPs that have attracted sufficient numbers of students and those that have met the
demands of teachers (the Letters specialization) or been valued by
employers of Modern Applied Languages graduates has to be
struck by our educational policy makers. Radical demographic
shifts have unfortunately worked against educational policies of
late, and now we are witnessing a dramatic decrease in students
enrolment coupled with an almost unacceptable lowering of standards. Under these circumstances, the prospects depend on the
strategies of ELSP departments to renegotiate their status social
function, and position their offerings in a balance between academic programmes quality and the need for mass/diverse access.
228
Works Cited
Amaral, Alberto., Maria João Rosa, and Diana Amado Tavares,
“Portugal.” The Rising Role and Relevance of Private
Higher Education in Europe. Eds. Peter James Wells, Jan
Sadlak, and Lazar Vlăsceanu. Bucharest: Universul S.A,
2007.
Calhoun, Craig. “The University and the Public Good.” Thesis,
11(84), 2006. 7–43.
Duru-Bellat, Marie. “Democratisation of Education and Reduction in Inequalities of Opportunities: an Obvious Link?”
European Conference on Educational Research, Dublin,
2005.
EFA Country Report on Romania (2000); 24 Nov. 2008.
<http://www.unesco.org/education/wef/countryreports/
romania/rapport_1.html>.
Florea, Silvia. Between and Across Cultures: The Challenge of
Education. Lucian Blaga Univ. Press (in press).
Goastellec, Gaelle. “Globalization and Implementation of an
Equity Norm in Higher Education.” Peabody Journal of
Education, 2008.
Johnstone, Bruce D. Sharing the Costs of Higher Education,
New York, College Entrance Examination Board,1986.
Johnstone, Bruce D. Student Loans in International Perspective:
Promises and Failures, Myths and Partial Truths. Buffalo:
State University of New York, 2000.
–, Response to Austerity: The Imperatives and Limitations of
Revenue Diversification in Higher Education. Buffalo: State
University of New York, 2001.
–, “The Economics and Politics of Cost Sharing in Higher Education: Comparative Perspectives.” Economics of Education
Review. No. 23 (2004): 403–10.
National Institute of Statistics (INS). Education. Chapter 8. Bucharest: INS, 2008.
Nicolescu, Luminita. “Contribution of Higher Education in
Transition towards the Market Economy: the Case of Roma229
nia.” Ten Years of Economic Transformation. Kari Luihto,
vol. III, Societies and Institutions in Transition, LUT Studies
in Industrial Engineering and Management no. 16, 2001.
253-281. 2001b.
Nicolescu, Luminita and Mihai Korda. “Romania.” The Rising
Role and Relevance of Private Higher Education in Europe.
Eds. Peter James Wells, Jan Sadlak and Lazar Vlăsceanu.
Bucharest: Universul S.A, 2007.
Paquette, Gabriel. “The Relevance of the Humanities.” Inside
Higher Education, 22 Jan. 2009.
<http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/01/22/paquette>.
Ringold, Dena. “Education of the Roma in Central and Eastern
Europe: Trends and Challenges.” World Bank Report.
Washington [D.C.]: World Bank, 2000.
Trow, Martin. The Transition from Elite to Mass Higher Education. Paris: OECD, 1974.
Wolf, Alison. Does Education Matter? Myths about Education
and Economic Growth. London, Penguin, 2002.
230
Part III
Collaborations and Circulations
15
Student and Faculty Exchanges
Involving the English Department
of Sofia University
Alexander Shurbanov1
For decades on end the English Department of Sofia University
had been the object of envy and wonder among other departments of foreign languages and literatures on account of its continuous international student exchange programme. In the conditions of enforced isolation from the western world, from the
1960s through the 1980s our top English majors of every year
were given the chance of spending three to four months in Britain, where they could prepare their final year dissertations with
access to adequate academic libraries and expert advice. There
were propitious times when up to a dozen Sofia graduants could
take advantage of this cherished opportunity.
How was this possible? Many answers can be given to this
question, but at the bottom are the good will and the mutual trust
and collegiality of Bulgarian and British academics, who were
convinced that the exchange was worthwhile and would be
beneficial for both sides. The initiator and mainspring of the entire programme was, beyond all doubt, Professor Michael
Holman. When the ball was started rolling, he was still a young
lecturer in the Slavic Department of Leeds University, with very
little institutional leverage but unprepared to accept that academic contacts across the geopolitical divide were precluded
apriori. He put a lot of energy into establishing friendly relations
with people in decision-making positions both in England and
Bulgaria and persuading a number of Slavic departments in his
country to send their students to Sofia for a semester-long instruction in Russian and Bulgarian. The students were asked to
leave part of their grants behind for their Bulgarian counterparts
to live on during their stay in Britain. The mechanism of this
233
exchange is laid out in detail in Michael’s account in this volume, so I needn’t go into that here.
The problems to solve on our side were several and we tried
to cope with them as best we could. The first of these was the
need to obtain administrative cooperation from our Ministry of
Education and the Rector’s office of Sofia University. The British students had to be provided with adequate accommodation,
free tuition and all academic privileges plus a complimentary
sightseeing tour around Bulgaria at the end of their course of
studies. Our second task was to persuade the teaching staff of
the Russian Department to offer unpaid classes to the visiting
students. In addition, we had to provide Bulgarian language instruction mainly from the resources of our own faculty. Last but
not least, it was up to us as co-organizers of the exchange to resist all outside pressures to compromise the selection of the Bulgarian participants by accepting criteria other than academic performance. This standard was not easy to maintain in the centralized, ideologically riddled and corrupted setup in which we had
to function.
Nothing is permanent in this sublunary world – even the apparently eternal Cold War division of Europe came to an end
with the collapse in late 1989 of its most palpable symbol, the
Berlin Wall. This tremendous change reverberated throughout
the system. Ironically, one of its consequences was the virtual
impossibility to continue the student exchange programme between Britain and Bulgaria. With the opening up of Eastern
Europe for all sorts of traffic with the West and the relaxation of
long-established restrictions, it became unprofitable for British
students to continue leaving their stipends behind for Bulgarian
students to use. Now they could simply travel anywhere with
their strong British currency in their pockets, paying for everything they needed abroad and still feeling much better off than
they did at home. Bulgarian candidates for educational trips to
Britain were thus left in the lurch.
New exchange schemes were bound to appear sooner or
later. First the Tempus and then the Erasmus and Socrates projects of the European community offered enticing opportunities
for student mobility. The post-communist nouveaux riches, of
course, tapped their own ample resources for the advancement
234
of their offspring but not for the others. In these circumstances,
the Sofia English Department tried to contrive new incentives
for academic excellence among its students. It instituted two internal grants for promising young researchers, named after the
eminent Bulgarian Anglicists Professor Marco Mincoff and Professor Andrey Danchev and subsidized jointly with the Open
Society and Sts Cyril and Methodius foundations. While these
scholarships were helpful for the most talented students in an
economically and financially difficult period in the national history, enabling them to concentrate on their studies and research
projects, they were hardly sufficient to support specializations
abroad. The new, Kalina Filipova, grant, which has succeeded
them, is of a similar character and magnitude. It is yet to be seen
what its effect may be.
The scholarship that has provided the most stable and continuous opportunity for our best students’ academic mobility
during the last dozen years and that is administered directly by
the Sofia English Department is the one created explicitly for it
by the University of Roehampton in London. This is a onesemester free tuition and accommodation offer for the most outstanding third-year student, which was made by the late Professor Stephen Holt, then Rector of Roehampton, after his visit to
Sofia University on the occasion of its English Department’s
seventieth anniversary in 1998. The fifteen undergraduates who
have benefited from the programme so far have founded a Sofia
Roehampton Alumni Club dedicated to the continuation and development of the cooperation between our two universities. The
scholarship initiative actually belonged to our dear friend Simon
Edwards, long-time member of Roehampton’s English Department. Just as Michael Holman played year after year the generous host to legions of Sofia students, Simon has done the same
for a series of them that is still growing. The warmth, care and
understanding of these two colleagues truly surpass all praise
and gratitude.
As for the exchange of teachers, it is of relatively shorter
standing. The Leeds-Sofia programme was the first in this respect too. At its later stages some staff members of the Sofia
English Department – on a smaller scale than the students, of
course, – were also given the chance of spending short periods
235
of research in Britain. After 1989 such opportunities increased
exponentially albeit for a limited time. Lecturers were exchanged regularly between the University of Sofia and the Universities of Roehampton and Sheffield. The heads of the English
Departments of the latter two, Professors Ann Thompson and
Michael Hattaway encouraged a number of their teaching staff
to participate in the exchange and welcomed our faculty to give
lectures and meet with colleagues in their institutions. Soon
these British-Bulgarian programmes, supported by the British
Council, were complemented by an American-Bulgarian one,
with the State University of New York, Albany, which ran for
almost a decade, initially subsidized by USIA and then by an
anonymous private donation. Directed by the English Department on our side again, it spread over a number of Sofia University departments and subjects, including librarianship. At the
other end, this programme – like the British ones – owed its realization entirely to the enthusiasm and persistence of a colleague and friend, the eminent American Slavic linguist and topnotch specialist in Bulgarian studies, Professor Ernest Scatton.
The teaching terms on both sides in this project were considerably longer than the two-week British-Bulgarian stints, extending
as they did to a full semester or even a complete academic year.
Yet another faculty exchange closely concerning the Sofia
English Department is that of lectors. Starting in the mid-1960s,
we welcomed British and American academics to help us implement and develop our extensive curricular programmes of
practical English. The presence of a native English speaker was
very important for both the students and the teachers in the Department. The British Council and, somewhat later, the American Fulbright Commission took good care of this activity and
made it possible to turn it into an uninterrupted plan for a number of years. As the British Council ceased to support the
scheme in the 1990s, the Fulbright Commission made their supply even more systematic than before. The reciprocal flow of
lectors in Bulgarian language, literature and culture to the universities of the English-speaking world was controlled by the
Ministry of Education. Since, as a rule, the host institutions in
both Britain and the USA wanted people who could teach these
subjects in English or through English, and the Bulgarian De236
partments of our universities were incapable of providing such
teachers, the Ministry turned most often to the English Departments for help. Thus, from the early 1970s through the late
1980s, quite a few colleagues from the Sofia English Department were recruited to fill the lectors’ positions at the Universities of London and Oxford as well as the University of California at Los Angeles. An additional lectorship was run during the
same period at the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield, exclusively manned by our Department.
All the above kinds of academic exchange have been invaluable for the Sofia English Department. At a time when contacts
between East and West were more than discouraged and ideological stereotyping was imposed on thinking of the other, this
lively communication across barriers helped both the faculty and
the students involved to see the world in a more adequate and
unprejudiced way. With the new opportunities opened after
1989, these programmes made it possible for us to mix and cooperate professionally with our colleagues in countries for which
English is a native language. They also helped us re-think and
update our methods and the structural framework of our teaching
in accordance with the needs of the time. The next step will
probably be a development of individual and group international
projects coordinated, though no longer directed, by the Department. Some evidence of this new movement is already in place.
Notes
1
Alexander Shurbanov was Head of the English Department of Sofia
University during 1977-79, 1989-93, and 1996-2002.
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16
Interview: Reflections on Collaborative
Experience
Michael Holman1
On the specifics of the scheme of collaboration
Q: What were the activities that the collaboration was initiated
for?
The scheme of co-operation between the St Kliment Ohridski
University of Sofia and the University of Leeds (UK) was initiated by the Department of Russian Studies (Leeds, Michael
Holman) in collaboration with the Department of English and
American Studies (Sofia, Zhana Molhova). It was in operation
for thirty years, from 1968/9 to 1999. As the scheme gained in
momentum, a number of other institutions in Britain and Bulgaria were drawn in. British institutions which at one time or
another sent undergraduate students of Russian to Sofia and received small numbers of students of English from Bulgaria included the universities of Exeter, Heriot-Watt, Hull, Manchester,
Norwich (UEA), Nottingham, Reading, Surrey, Sussex, the
Polytechnic of Central London, Newcastle Polytechnic and the
Buckinghamshire College of Higher Education (High Wycombe).
At various times during the scheme’s operation, postgraduate students and members of staff from Leeds and Sofia were
exchanged on an ad hoc basis, primarily to facilitate access to
libraries and promote research. I visited Sofia almost every year
to continue my research, to service and develop the exchange
and to monitor the progress of the British students. Staff responsible for the fulfillment of foreign residence requirements at the
other British universities involved in the scheme also occasionally visited Sofia to monitor their students’ progress.
For the whole period of its operation the scheme was run
from the University of Leeds. Over the last fifteen years or so,
239
however, following the participation of universities wishing to
send students of Russian to Sofia for tuition in Russian, it was
operated in close collaboration with the Russian Language Undergraduate Study Committee (RLUSC).
Q: What were the expected outcomes and benefits when the collaboration was initiated?
Leeds students of Russian and Bulgarian, and students of Russian from other British Universities, were able to gain first-hand
experience of living in a Slavonic, socialist country – comparing
life there with the life some of them had seen on exchanges with
the Soviet Union. Intensive, specially organized classes in Russian and Bulgarian combined with the experience of everyday
life in the student hostel, in Sofia and on trips round the country,
led to an improvement in their active and passive command of
the Bulgarian language. Students of Russian benefited from
well-organised courses provided by specialist teachers of Russian at Sofia University. Sofia students of English, selected from
among those academically best qualified, had a unique opportunity to spend an extended period living among students in a
capitalist country, working on their dissertations and travelling
widely throughout the country.
Q: What period was covered?
The scheme (1968/9 to 1999) enabled British undergraduates –
predominantly from Leeds University – in their penultimate year
of studying Russian (sometimes, as was the case with Leeds,
studying Bulgarian as a special subject) to spend three months,
(April to June) at Sofia University studying Russian and Bulgarian. In exchange, Sofia sent Final year students of English, all
writing dissertations in English, to spend upwards of three
months at the University of Leeds, (usually April to June) attending classes, using the libraries and receiving guidance on
their dissertations.
Q: Was the exchange unilateral/bilateral/multilateral? Which
countries/institutions were involved?
On an inter-institutional level, the exchange was primarily bilateral, British sending institutions receiving Bulgarian students on
240
a student-month exchange basis, and aiming at institutional parity year-by-year. Occasionally, especially in the “mature,” stable
years, small numbers of student months were carried over from
one year to the next, primarily between Sofia and Leeds. Occasionally student months were transferred between British institutions. The exchange was multilateral if considered on an intrainstitutional level, for while Sofia sent students of English to the
UK to study topics primarily related to English literature and
language (and therefore taught in departments of English), the
British exchange students were taught primarily by the Department of Russian and by Bulgarian language specialists in the
Department of English and American Studies. With the development of resource-centred funding based on student numbers,
this lack of departmental parity of input caused certain problems, for the departments providing supervision for the incoming Sofia students felt under increasing pressure to “charge” for
their services.
Q: How did the collaboration come into being?
The initiative had its roots in personal contacts. In 1965 I spent
three months (October to December) at the University of Sofia
on a British Council funded postgraduate scholarship. (I had
married a Bulgarian, resident in Sofia in April 1965.) In 1966 I
took up a post as assistant lecturer in Russian Studies at the University of Leeds. Czech was already being taught as a special
subject within the Department of Russian Studies, and the Head
of Department, Professor Frank Borras, supported my initiative
to begin teaching Bulgarian on the same basis. Professor Borras
had recently embarked on an undergraduate exchange with the
University of Brno, and the University was minded to support
the establishment of exchange links with other universities in
Eastern and Central Europe to enable its students to experience
at first hand life in the countries whose languages they were
studying. I made it my business, supported by the Department
and the University, to investigate the possibilities of establishing
a similar link with the University of Sofia.
241
Q: To what degree was it formalized? Were written agreements
made? What sorts of sanctions were secured?
The exchange was established within the terms of the Cultural
Agreement between Bulgaria and the United Kingdom. Eventually, separate written agreements were drawn up and signed by
representatives of the University of Sofia and the University of
Leeds. These usually covered the overall aims and objectives of
the co-operation extending forward over a number of years,
while separate agreements covering a year at a time were entered into by exchange of letters between the Department of
Russian Studies in Leeds, the Ministry of Education in Sofia and
the Department of English and American Studies at Sofia University. Sanctions were never discussed, but the ultimate sanction was always withdrawal from the scheme.
Q: What sorts of administrative arrangements were made?
The only administrative arrangements in place before overtures
were made to Sofia University were the provisions of the Cultural Agreement. These were crucial to the initiative, and over
the years I had to make sure that as new Cultural Agreements
were prepared for signature, they included clauses facilitating
links between institutions and the exchange of undergraduates.
At Leeds University I worked with the support of the Head of
Department and the agreement of the university authorities responsible for international contacts. More widely, I also liaised
closely with the British Council, both at the London Head Office
and also in Sofia, via the Cultural Attaché, a British Council appointee, based, since the closure of the British Council Sofia office by the Bulgarian authorities in the late 1940s, within the
British Embassy. In Sofia I had to obtain the support of the university authorities and the section of the Ministry of Education
responsible for links with foreign institutions. I also liaised
closely with representatives of the Committee for Friendship. It
was a mammoth task, for the support of all these various authorities – and more behind the scenes, no doubt – had to be obtained and maintained, and this at a time when the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the crushing of the reform movement had led officialdom in East and Central Europe to be cautious in promoting new links with the West. I periodically ob242
tained financial support from the British Council for a variety of
study trips to Bulgaria, and these enabled me to keep the machine “well-oiled” by doing the rounds of the various offices and
institutions involved and building up relationships with new appointees to important enabling offices.
Q: What sorts of broader (other than personal) incentives and
disincentives were relevant to initiating such a collaboration?
Despite the clampdown following the crushing of the Prague
spring, in Bulgaria there were people in key positions, both in
the Ministry of Education and the University of Sofia, still prepared to experiment and take small risks in the interest of their
institutions. I was lucky in my overtures, for I chanced upon
people who had the necessary political credentials to feel confident in taking risks for the benefit of their students – and themselves! For if the students were to travel to Britain and study
there, then the officials responsible for the exchange would be
able to travel too. And this they did, to their and the students’
advantage. Having a link with Leeds meant that Leeds University could issue invitations to academics at Sofia University, and
on the basis of these invitations, visas could be issued for travel
to the UK. Similarly, invitations issued by the University of
Sofia enabled students and staff from Leeds to obtain visas for
travel to Bulgaria.
Q: How was the collaboration funded?
At the UK end, there was little or no separate, direct funding for
the exchange in addition to the student grants. The key to the
funding of the exchanges lay in the requirements, adopted by an
increasing number of British universities in the 1960s, for students enrolled on Modern Language courses to spend a compulsory period of residence in the country – or countries – whose
languages they were studying. The periods varied in length from
a few weeks to a whole academic year, and degrees were only
awarded to students who had fulfilled their foreign residence
requirements. This meant that the Local Education Authorities
(LEAs) were obliged to provide funds for foreign residence to
enable students they were supporting to obtain their degrees.
The actual operation of the various schemes of study at different
243
universities was complicated, but in essence the grants provided
by the LEAs had to cover travel, subsistence – food and accommodation – and academic fees. British undergraduates going to
Sofia received heavily subsidised accommodation in a postgraduate student hostel, a monthly stipend from the Bulgarian
authorities, and tuition at Sofia University in Russian and Bulgarian. In exchange, Leeds University provided access to libraries, some tuition and research supervision. The outgoing Leeds
students left behind in Leeds a proportion of their grant, thus
providing the Bulgarian students with sufficient money for food
and lodging in a student hostel. At various times I was able to
obtain from the Bulgarian authorities – usually through the good
offices of the Committee for Friendship – a small grant to enable
British students to take part in some organised excursions outside Sofia. And in the UK, the Great Britain East Europe Centre
at times provided small travel grants to enable the Bulgarian
students to extend their knowledge of Britain beyond Leeds and
West Yorkshire!
On the experience of the collaboration
Q: Have any records been maintained of the conduct of these
collaborations?
Over the thirty or so years I was involved in the operation of the
exchange with Sofia, a considerable amount of paperwork accumulated. Much of this was of ephemeral importance and will
not have been preserved. Copies of Agreements, however, and
correspondence with the different institutions involved will have
been preserved, and will eventually find its way into the University Archive. Until it has been sorted, though, access will be difficult, so for time being, I will hold on to the materials I still
have and would be happy to make them available to serious researchers.
Q: How many students/tutors benefited or took part?
Numbers involved in any one year depended on the number of
British students who opted to study Russian in Sofia rather than
on courses in the USSR, and the number of Leeds students who
opted to take Bulgarian as a special subject and opt to go to
244
Sofia rather than to the Soviet Union. Over the whole period of
its operation, the scheme enabled between 300 and 400 undergraduates from Britain to go to Bulgaria and the equivalent
number of Bulgarian students to come to Britain. It is difficult,
without having the papers to hand, to estimate the numbers of
staff and postgraduates who benefited from travel under the exchange scheme, but I would estimate that in the region of a
dozen British academics involved in exchanges who will have
visited Bulgaria in connection with the scheme, while upwards
of forty different members of Sofia University will have come to
Leeds. Half a dozen postgraduates will also have spent time in
Leeds on a variety of research projects. In addition, as Leeds
was the only institution outside London University (School of
Slavonic and East European Studies) teaching Bulgarian, we
were frequently on the itineraries of academics from Bulgaria
visiting the UK on exchange and other schemes run by the British Council, the British Academy and the Great Britain East
Europe Centre.
Q: What are/were the educational, academic (incl. research),
and interpersonal developments/ benefits for the persons involved?
My own involvement with the exchange programme enabled me
to work on a variety of research and publication projects with
academics from Sofia University and the Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences. We have published papers and books together and
have organized conferences both in Bulgaria and in the UK. (I
am currently working, together with my co-author from Sofia
University, on the third edition of Teach Yourself Bulgarian,
first published in 1993. My co-author came to Leeds first as an
undergraduate, later as a postgraduate and finally as a lector. It
was during this latter stay that we worked together to produce
the first edition of the course.) Contacts made in Bulgaria during
the early years of the exchange introduced me to translators and
writers which in turn led to my translating works of Bulgarian
literature into English. I cannot conceive of my academic career
without this close involvement with Sofia University. I have
been twice decorated by the Bulgarian Government for services
to Anglo-Bulgarian cultural interchange and have also been
245
awarded an Honorary D. Litt. by Sofia University. I have recently been elected to honorary membership of the Bulgarian
Union of Translators.
Many of the Bulgarian students who participated in the undergraduate exchange have returned as postgraduates and then
as members of staff. Some, like my co-author, have been seconded to Leeds University as Bulgarian lectors, assisting me in
the teaching of Bulgarian to generations of students, some of
whom have gone on to use Bulgarian in their careers. Many of
the Bulgarian students who came to Leeds have gone on to distinguished careers in academia, business, diplomacy and public
administration. Of course there can never be any proof, but I like
to think that the unique experience of an extended study period
in Britain at an impressionable time in their lives broadened
their horizons and contributed to their professional success.
Q: Were/are there institutional benefits?
From the late 1970s on, Leeds University became a centre for
the study of things Bulgarian in the UK. After my retirement in
1999, Bulgarian continued to be taught, albeit at a slightly reduced intensity, at the undergraduate level, postgraduates have
been supervised on PhD dissertations, and the Senior Lecturer in
charge of the Russian teaching has developed strong links with
historians and theologians at Sofia University. The emphasis has
changed, but the link has been maintained.
From very early on in the exchange, we received an enormous amount of assistance in the way of books and current
newspapers from the Committee for Friendship, from Sofia University, from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and from the
National Library in Sofia. This enabled us to build up in the
Brotherton Library – an excellent collection of works on Bulgarian, literature, language, history, culture, ethnography and politics, sufficient for undergraduate study and the first year of postgraduate study in a variety of areas. Most of this material was in
Bulgarian, but there were also numerous translations of Bulgarian literature in English.
Q: What sorts of continuities and discontinuities were experienced in these collaborations as times and contexts changed?
246
Looking back over the period of my involvement with the academic exchange programme between Leeds University and
Sofia, I am amazed at the way in which we were able to keep the
link going over such a long period, despite changes in political
direction in Sofia. In part this has to be put down to the fact that
both sides recognized the academic benefits of the scheme and,
in Sofia at least, many of those who had personally benefited,
continued to be involved with academic and other forms of exchange with Britain in their careers. Undergraduate participants
became postgraduates, then university lecturers and then moved
into senior positions. Almost all the senior academic staff in the
Department of English and American Studies have at one time
or another spent periods in Leeds and acknowledge the benefit
of this experience to their academic careers. The current Rector
of Sofia University2 himself once briefly came to Leeds as a
postgraduate, and his father, a previous Rector and Minister of
Education, once worked closely with me on the organization of
Anglo-Bulgarian Colloquia. At a time when travel to the West
was restricted, the exchange kept an extra window open to another, different world, a world of which they had once been part
but from which ideology sought to separate them. By setting up,
maintaining and developing the exchange, in some small way
we made it easier, once the ideology had been cast aside, for
“normal” relations to be resumed from one side of Europe to the
other.
There is no longer any need for, nor any possibility of the
type of exchange we set up with socialist Bulgaria. Students and
staff are now able to travel more freely, money – if it is available
– can be freely transferred, and large numbers of Bulgarian students are enrolled on courses in Britain and across Europe.
Retrospection or current perception of the collaboration
Q: What sorts of longer-term impact (beyond those within the
plan and rationale of the collaboration) has the collaboration
had for the participating persons/institutions?
I find this question very difficult to answer from my current position as a retired former Head of the Department of Russian and
Slavonic Studies and former Head of the School of Modern
Languages at Leeds University. Better equipped than me are
247
those currently working in the two universities involved. Of one
thing, however, I am sure: had I not been closely connected with
practical translators and theoreticians of translation in Sofia, I
would never have persevered, during my last years in Leeds,
with the development of translation studies as a separate discipline at Leeds. Nor would I have embarked on the establishment
of the one-year postgraduate course leading to MA in Applied
Translation Studies. This course has been hugely successful,
spawning a variety of postgraduate courses in aspects of translation and interpreting, and Leeds has become one of the major
centres in the UK for translator training.
Notes
1
Michael Holman coordinated the collaboration between the
University of Leeds and Sofia University from 1968 to 1999.
2
Professor Ivan Ilchev, Rector from November 2007 in reference. Editor’s note.
248
17
Between Sofia and London
Simon Edwards1
Contexts
I begin by describing in very general terms two different contexts in which the collaboration between the English departments of Sofia University and Roehampton University has
evolved. Firstly, I suggest some reasons for the initially perceived remoteness of Bulgaria on the mental map of Europe as it
existed among the British. Secondly, I sketch some of the
changes taking place in British higher education in the last
twenty years and in particular in the field of English Studies.
Finally, I provide a largely anecdotal account of some of the
achievements of the collaboration, culminating, as it does, in the
setting up of a student scholarship enabling undergraduate students of English from Sofia to join classes at Roehampton for a
semester.
There are no grand conclusions to be drawn from the history
of this small, enduring and for the most part “enlightened”
scheme. Roehampton has no Slavonic Studies programme and
thus – unlike Leeds and Sheffield (and Albany in the USA) – no
prima facie case, in terms of reciprocal activities, for sustaining
the collaboration. There has been no formal project of curriculum development, such as those in the past funded by Tempus.
Perhaps this informal educational experiment has been simply
an exercise in mutual good will and an illustration of what universities were once thought to be for: to provide the opportunity
to advance, case by individual case, understanding, knowledge,
and experience among a hypothetical international community
of scholarship and learning.
In these last twenty years, however, the question of what
universities are for, not least in relation to how they are funded
and organised, has shown itself to be highly contentious. While
the Bologna Declaration proposes an ideal European form of
249
university education (it is regarded with considerable scepticism
by the British), its terms are compounded and complicated by
the consolidation of English as the lingua franca of a globalised
order of teaching and learning as well as by the very different
funding arrangements currently within the UK system. Thus, as
this collection of essays confirms, the role of English (and indeed American) Studies in the Anglo-Saxon system of higher
education is of necessity a significant point of enquiry and debate. Nevertheless, traces of the Bologna ideal do appear faintly
in the almost incidental exchange of some academic practices
between our universities. More significant, however, has been
the evidence of just how well the skills brought by the Sofia students, the product of the Bulgarian curriculum, match if not exceed those of our home students.
Just after I had agreed to contribute to this volume the editors drew my attention to an extraordinary project launched by
the British Council in Bulgaria between 2001 and 2003: “Branding Bulgaria.” Evidence of this project comes in the form of a
small bi-lingual book entitled Take It Easy: Towards a Strategy
for Representing Bulgaria. (A website seems to have been set up
at the same time with the last posting in 2007, but is currently
unavailable.) The cover illustration of the book consists of what,
on first sight, appears like a cache of amphetamines whose casing is red, white and green, the colours of the Bulgarian national
flag. Closer examination suggests that this is in fact a pile of
dried beans, implying, one supposes, an update on traditional
Bulgarian cuisine. Here was a “cool,” stylish, laid-back young
country, high on speed rather than pulses, and committed to
“taking it easy.”
While the project team were all local “from a wide range of
backgrounds in cultural representation, government, tourism,
business, fine arts, academia and the media,” anxious to “share
and cross-fertilise ideas and experiences,” there was also the
obligatory Project Consultant, Professor Alan Durant of the
University of Middlesex. We are told early on in the book that
“in the mid-nineties, the tag, ‘national image’ was replaced by
‘national brand’... National brands ‘sell’ the country as a product
and lifestyle” (Mineva 2003: 7). Of course there was a deep and
surely unconscious irony that it should be the British Council
250
rather than a Bulgarian organisation that took on this project of
“branding,” and even more the implied proprietorial claim over
the country as though it were some vast ranch or plantation, its
inhabitants slaves or cattle, a rich source of exploitation.
Absurd, presumptuous and fanciful as this project now
seems, two points may be worth making. One is that Bulgaria
almost certainly had dropped under the radar of general British
perceptions since the 1870s. There were exceptions of course to
which I will return, and the branding project itself coincided
with a miniature boom in second home buying by the British as
their domestic property market spiralled out of control. As I tried
to recall each stage of our university collaboration I found that it
had met initially a barrier of non- or mis-recognition that had
little to do with the generic character of either “former communist regimes” or the “Balkans” (as so comprehensively explored
in Maria Todorova 1997). Maybe then Bulgaria did indeed need
a “make over.” But an equivalent barrier was that at the same
time the UK university system itself became obsessed with corporate branding, with selling itself in international markets.
Huge sums of public money were spent calling in consultants
and updating logos. Mission statements and business plans proliferated. Franchises were negotiated with dubious private colleges. Discounted fees for mass admissions were hammered out
world-wide. The “senior management team” (aka the Vicechancellor, the Rector, the Provosts, the Deans – titles that oddly
retained their archaic cachet – they too had been “re-branded”!)
jetted around the world to “close” these deals. Indeed as the
British Council itself ran down its resources in eastern Europe it
was becoming increasingly, if not exclusively, the agent of “selling” British education overseas under its own new brand “Education UK” with its banal slogan “The Best You Can Be” (since
replaced by “Innovation. Individual. Inspirational.”). Where
might an old-fashioned academic exchange fit into this aggressive new market-oriented world? What was in it for us?
Roehampton’s first contact with Sofia took place after the
arrival of Stephen Holt as the new Rector of the university. He
had come from the University of Kent, where he had been a colleague of Richard Crampton, the leading British historian of
modern Bulgaria. Thus in 1988 he invited Professor Alexander
251
Shurbanov, then on a visit to Leeds, to present a paper to the
English department. At this point Todor Zhivkov was still head
of a government which had begun opportunistically to target
citizens of Turkish origin. The embalmed corpse of Georgi
Dimitrov still lay in his mausoleum. Little of this was known. As
far as the world of “actually existing socialism” was concerned
it was glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union and Solidarity in Poland that exercised the attentions of the political commentariat. Even tracking backwards to World War Two and its
aftermath it was always “somewhere else” that came into view:
The Berlin airlift, and then the Berlin Wall; Tito’s break with the
USSR; the magical Hungarian football team and then the rising
of 1956; the rich vein of Polish films in the arthouse cinemas;
the Prague spring of 1968; Ceauşescu’s break with the Soviet
Union (earning him a Knighthood of the Bath, as well as honours from British universities). While Yugoslavia with its Mediterranean coastline had become a popular holiday resort, Sunny
Beach and Golden Sands were the destinations of relatively few
non-metropolitan unionised working class communities. Even
the hermetically sealed republic of Albania exercised a certain
fascination, by virtue of its inaccessibility. So nobody thought
much of or about Bulgaria – except perhaps in terms of the
schoolboy onomastic joke inaugurated by the Russophobe poet
Algernon Swinburne (who was to end up living in Putney just a
mile away from our university), whose intervention in Gladstone’s pro-Bulgarian campaign of 1876, insisted on referring to
“bloody buggers” (Goldsworthy 1998: 36). The perversity of
this representation might have been confirmed every four years
by the flickering images of the hypertrophied bodies of Olympic
medal winning weightlifters on our TV screens. Otherwise Bulgaria was simply the source of magnificent red wines, but always at the bottom end of the market, and their magnificence
appears the more clearly in retrospect as the new private manufacturers lost contact with the British supermarket buyers.
Indeed it was unlikely that anybody in the English department who attended Professor Shurbanov’s presentation knew
that both Tsvetan Todorov and Julia Kristeva, of whose work
they would have been well aware, were of Bulgarian rather than
French origin. If Todorov and Kristeva represented aspects of
252
the by then (late 1980s) widely circulating “theoretical” preoccupations and anxieties common to all programmes in English
Studies (as well as other areas of the humanities), there was another set of preoccupations and anxieties vexing the liberal intelligentsia working in UK universities. These concerned the response to the “Thatcherite” cuts in public service funding. The
rhetoric and discourses of the “New Left” (an oddly disembodied politics in the face of the collapse in support for the Labour
party and the defeats to which the trade union movement were
subjected) rang as loudly and widely through both managerial
debates and conflicts as it did, more abstractly, through the
transformations in the English curriculum. There was in fact a
central paradox in the development of British universities in the
1980s (and continuing into the 1990s). While budgets were consistently slashed, the same period witnessed the belated growth
of a “mass” system of tertiary education, not least in the successful expansion of the former “polytechnic” sector. This indeed
goes some way to explaining the emphasis on both competitive
branding and international marketing, as universities became
more and more dependent on overseas tuition fees. “Internationalising the campus” became a recurring catch phrase, conveying
elements of both a worthy academic idealism and an affiliation
with the by now modish process of globalisation, while in reality
justifying the urgent pursuit of much needed cash. Arguably
then it was out of just such a paradox that, with the support of
various new funding schemes (not least those like ERASMUS
fronted by the European Union), Roehampton was able first to
build links with Sofia, and eventually, to “smuggle” in, from
1999, a highly successful scholarship scheme for their undergraduate students of English.
There were some other paradoxes at work too insofar as the
roller-coaster ride of expansion (together with the imposition of
a new corporate management structure replacing the old “collegiality”) was accompanied by the appropriation of many of the
terms and aims of the “New Left.” This appropriation took place
in both the institutional aspirations of the universities themselves
under the rubric of “widening participation” (sometimes, though
not always, achieved), but more importantly in the dissolution of
older academic disciplines. English Studies in particular seems
253
to have had a central albeit often troubled role to play here. Its
former cloister walls, full of carefully tended canonical plants,
seemed rather quickly to acquire a whole set of revolving doors,
facing not only on to the street with its single issue politics, but
also onto adjoining academic disciplines. Thus not only the impact of structuralist and post-structuralist thought that might be
seen as squarely rooted in linguistic theory, but also the rise of
feminist criticism, post colonial and queer studies, the new historicism, “green” reading. Each of the latter absorbed promiscuously from psychology, sociology, philosophy and theology,
history, the fine arts, politics, economics, and legal studies. Absorbed and mutated. As the questions of cultural “bricolage” and
“hybridity” seemed to loom large in the post colonial multicultural landscapes and timelines in new maps of social space and
new accounts of British history, literary studies themselves reciprocated with their own hybridised intellectual formations.
One further typical paradox may have been the morphing of the
“cultural materialism,” a category of Marxist thought in the
1960s and 1970s, into “cultural studies” (its emphasis on “popular” cultural studies often loosely associated with media studies)
as part of the new curricular empires of the old polytechnics in
particular, less restricted as these were by inherited academic
structures. It was these British “cultural studies” indeed that
were to provide, in some part, the intellectual template for the
“product” to be marketed by the British Council, no longer confined by the strictures of what constituted the aesthetic-moral
imperatives of high art.
Partnership
And, let it be said, it was the British Council that provided financial support for the first five years of our association from
1989. Initially, one may suppose, this support would have
emerged from its older “political-ideological” mission in the socialist societies of Eastern Europe, a form of low key cultural
infiltration and subversion. The atmosphere of perestroika of the
late 1980s (Thatcher herself had claimed Mikhail Gorbachev, its
author, as somebody with whom she could do business) might
just have given an extra incentive to taking this initiative. Given
the events of 1989/90, the Council would have then assumed its
254
continuing support was an appropriate intervention in what
looked like an open playing field in terms of the political future,
bristling as it was with expectations and uncertainties. Thus it
was willing to pay travel and expenses for a member of each
department to spend a fortnight in either London or Sofia, with
the understanding that the English visitor would teach a range of
courses during the fortnight and that the Bulgarian visitor would
have the opportunity to undertake research in the subject.
This phase of our association culminated in the award of an
Honorary Doctorate to Professor Shurbanov in the summer of
1993. Alexander Shurbanov’s own achievements in the field of
English Studies and as Head of the new Department of English
and American Studies that emerged from the old pre-1990 department of English Philology may provide a clue to what lay at
the core of curriculum. The exemplary English language skills
acquired by students were, as visiting colleagues quickly discovered, a sine qua non (already far in advance of those to be found
in many other southern European universities in the 1990s) – nor
were they confined to students of English. Professor Shurbanov
himself was not only a Shakespeare scholar of distinction, but
also a translator into Bulgarian of Milton (Paradise Lost), Chaucer (The Canterbury Tales), and Dylan Thomas’s poetry. Both
he and his colleagues in the literature section of the department
assumed a deep inwardness with what constituted the canon.
This is clearly reflected in the case of his work as a translator in
meeting the challenge of the shifting registers of that canon from
the arrival of a recognizable English language poetry in the late
Middle Ages, through the elaborate baroque syntax and lexicon
of the seventeenth century revolutionary Protestant epic, to the
intricacies and willed obscurities of mid twentieth century modernist verse. It would be safe to assume that the research and
teaching in both theoretical and applied linguistics drew on the
same range of interests, sophistication, intellectual command
and investment. Notably all of this was achieved with relatively
limited library resources in Sofia and before the era of instant
electronic information retrieval. If it is possible to describe the
“culture” of a university department, then there is no question
that this was a rich, productive, and hugely enabling one.
255
Once the British Council had withdrawn its support and
Tempus funding had been phased out, the best that could be
done was to sign a Socrates agreement for student and teaching
staff mobility. While this enabled me to make a number of further visits to Sofia, the funding was never sufficient for either
Bulgarian students or faculty to make any other than fitful use of
it. In 1998, however, the English department in Sofia convened
an international conference to celebrate the 70th anniversary of
teaching English and American Studies. Roehampton was represented by not only Professor Ann Thompson, as the then Head
of English, but also the Rector, Stephen Holt. This seemed to me
the opportunity to press both of them – but particularly Stephen
Holt who was about to retire – to set up a scholarship scheme
which I had had at the back of my mind for some time. They
both gave it their enthusiastic support. Tuition fees would be
waived, free accommodation and meals were provided and some
money was set aside (later to be tied to fifteen hours of work a
week in the university library). In the spring semester of 1999
we welcomed the first student. Two years ago, after a change of
management, the scheme was briefly threatened by a characteristically penny-pinching ploy of claiming “to be undertaking a
review of all our scholarships” (i.e. closing them down unannounced). It is a measure of the achievement of this cohort of
students that it was possible to draw on the unanimous and unconditional support of the English department in securing the
future of the scheme.
Roehampton’s English department attracts plenty of able
students but these are our stars – whether in English literature or
English language and linguistics, or, most recently, Creative
Writing. Highly motivated, widely read, and intellectually voracious, they have invariably achieved first class marks. Although
it has been a condition of the award that they should not have
spent more than two weeks in an Anglophone country they arrive with an outstanding command of both spoken and written
English. Not only do they take a full part in the classes they join,
they are often active in raising the participation levels of the
other students. In English Language studies they already have a
head start on home students. In English literature they are as re256
sponsive in their encounters with canonical work as they are to a
whole range of theoretical approaches.
Judging by their replies to a short questionnaire, although
they are uncomplaining they are not uncritical. They welcome
the participatory emphasis of the English seminar system, but
not without continuing to recognise the value of the formal instruction with which they are more familiar. They notice that it
is easier to make friends with other non-English students and
that most English students show a marked lack of curiosity
about Bulgaria. (“Is it in Europe?”) Unsurprisingly, they miss
the food, and are shocked by the drinking habits of their English
peers as well as what is sometimes perceived as a more general
philistinism. While they enjoy the cultural resources of London
(as well as its multiculturalism), those who have a chance to
travel in the UK notice how much friendlier people are outside
the capital. (In one case it is the Scots who turned out to resemble Bulgarians!) They notice too the lingering snobberies of
English society, the clearly maintained gaps between social
classes. With this in mind, one student interestingly and generously points out how unfair, absurd even, it seems that so few
other highly able students of English will not share her good fortune. And of course, competitive as the scholarship is, these students do represent an academic “elite” – though unlike the same
elites of Britain and much of Western Europe, this status (and
their consciousness of it) has little to do with either their social
or family background.
Many of them have moved on to postgraduate study not only
in Bulgaria but in Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, the USA
and the UK. Others are active in EU projects in Bulgaria, in
green politics, in national television and in teaching the disabled.
An engaging consequence of the scheme is that they continue to
network with one another and meet together through a Roehampton Alumni Society. They are indeed now in some senses
veritable “citizens of the world.” To invoke this term as well as
the existence of a sociable “club” is also to invoke something of
the European Enlightenment. Following the work of the German
philosopher Jürgen Habermas, the British historian John Pocock,
and the American sociologist Richard Sennett literary critics
working in the “long eighteenth century” have paid a good deal
257
of attention to the appearance in the advanced economies of the
West of a distinctive “public sphere,” of a “civic humanism,” of
“polite conversation” – all means for negotiating and sustaining
a vision of secular and rational progress.
The encounter with Bulgarian academic life in the late twentieth and early twenty first century suggests that there remain
very strong vestiges of these forms of civility, of courtesy, of
rational curiosity and enquiry underpinned by a commitment to
learning and scholarship. Since 1989 several members of Roehampton staff have been welcomed with extraordinary warmth
and hospitality by countless colleagues and students, not only in
Sofia but also in Veliko Turnovo. They have arranged accommodation for us; waited at airports and bus stops; showed us
around the country and the cities; answered endless questions;
assembled large, enthusiastic audiences for such lectures as we
have presented; dealt patiently with our ignorance of the language as we tried to make out the Cyrillic alphabet; bought us
tickets for the opera and for the football at the Levski Stadium;
proved themselves convivial and generous company – not only
in the burgeoning restaurant and café culture of the last twenty
years – but also in their homes.
Old curriculum or new, market led or publicly funded, instruction in a tractable body of knowledge or independent study,
whether “taking it easy” or otherwise – the experience of the last
twenty years between our two universities confirms the existence and the resilience of something like a common European
culture, accessible through the English language but readily
open to the world beyond. In this milieu difference can be a matter of negotiable disagreement rather than of bitter contestation.
Bulgaria is neither strange nor “other” as we might once have
thought. The food is better, you can smoke where you like, the
seasons are distinct, after every general election there is a
change of government as each new one is mired in corruption. In
Britain we await the final demise of the New Labour political
project and the coming of a government formed from a cabal of
Old Etonian Europhobe “toffs.” University tuition fees are set to
hit the roof, while the greed and vulgarity of so much of British
public life will remain unchanged. Meanwhile Roehampton’s
continuing liaison with the University of Sofia will serve as gen258
tle reproach and a forceful reminder of another set of values and
uses mediated by a common English language.
Notes
1
Simon Edwards has been actively involved in the collaboration
schemes between the University of Roehampton and Sofia University
since 1990.
Works Cited
Goldsworthy, Vesna. Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of
the Imagination. New Haven & London: Yale University
Press, 1998.
Mineva, Milla. Take It Easy: Towards a Strategy for Representing Bulgaria Sofia: The British Council, IPK Rodina, 2003.
Todorova, Maria. Imagining the Balkans. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
259
18
The Fulbright Program in Bulgaria
Julia Stefanova1
In a speech on the 30th anniversary of the Fulbright programme
democratic Senator James William Fulbright of Arkansas made
the following momentous statement:
International educational exchange is the most significant
current project designed to continue the process of humanizing mankind to the point that men can learn to live in peace
– eventually even to cooperate in constructive activities
rather than compete in a mindless contest of mutual destruction...We must try to expand the boundaries of human wisdom, empathy and perception, and there is no way of doing
that except through education. (Fulbright 1976)
This statement was made thirty-three years ago but sounds as
relevant and true today as ever. This is so for the simple reason
that humanization is an endless process, peace is precarious, destruction is still a pending threat and education will always be
wanting.
Senator Fulbright’s idea of strengthening mutual understanding among different nations and people with diverse cultural
backgrounds through exchange of knowledge, values and cultural empathy is one of the most important insights of the 20th
century and has inexhaustible potential and enormous renewable
energy. Time can never make it obsolete because it feeds on history and at every crucial point of history it is ready to offer
something new and beneficial to all.
In September 1945 Senator Fulbright proposed a bill on establishing an international academic exchange programme to
be funded through disposal of US wartime properties in
Europe. The bill was passed unequivocally and became law on
August 1, 1946. The purpose of this law, known as the Fulbright-Hays Act, is
261
to enable the Government of the US to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United states and the
people of other countries by means of educational and cultural exchange; to strengthen the ties which unites us with
other nations by demonstrating the educational and cultural
interests, developments and achievements of the people of
the US and the other nations, and the contributions being
made toward a peaceful and more fruitful life for people
throughout the world (Fulbright-Hays Act 1946)
The Fulbright programme is by far the flagship exchange
program in the US and also operates in 180 countries in the
world. On the US side, it is administered by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the Department of State with the
assistance of cooperating agencies, e.g. the Institute of International Education (IIE), the Council for International Exchange of
Scholars (CIES), the Department of Education etc. In 50 countries, including Bulgaria, there are bi-national commissions that
administer the program guided by the principle of binationalism. Since 1946 the Fulbright exchange has produced a
global community of over 300,000 alumni from 180 countries.
These are distinguished scholars and scientists, politicians, public figures, artists and intellectuals. Thirty-five alumni from nine
countries are recipients of the Nobel Prize; sixty have been
awarded the Pulitzer Prize; one has walked on the moon; eighteen have served as heads of state or government; twenty as their
country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs; one as Secretary-General
of the UN and another as Secretary-General of NATO.
The primary source of funding for the Fulbright programme
worldwide is an annual appropriation by the US Congress. The
most recent statistics available is for fiscal year 2008: $222m.
This does not include the support from foreign governments and
the private sector which adds another $140m. In fiscal year 2009
the Congress will allocate about $235m.
As mentioned earlier, the Fulbright exchange exists in 180
countries and in fifty of them there are bi-national commissions
whose main function is to administer the programme locally. In
the former socialist countries, including Bulgaria, the exchange
started well before the changes in the early 1990s. From the late
1960s to 1992 the number of Bulgarian and American grantees
262
was 182: 102 Bulgarians and 80 Americans. The Fulbright competition however was not open and the selected grantees, especially on the Bulgarian side, had to meet additional requirements
and criteria that directly derived from the socio-political situation in the country and the Cold War climate.
The Bulgarian-American Commission was inaugurated on
February 9, 1993 under a ten-year bilateral agreement between
the Governments of the United States and the Republic of Bulgaria. A new bilateral agreement was signed on December 3,
2003, re-establishing the Commission in perpetuity. The Commission is a bi-national2 not-for-profit organization governed by
a ten-member Board. Five of the members are US citizens and
five are Bulgarians. They represent government, education and
business in the respective country. The Bulgarian Minister of
Education and Science and the US Ambassador to the Republic
of Bulgaria serve as honorary chairpersons of the Commission.
The primary source of funding for the Fulbright programme
in Bulgaria is an annual US government allocation of about
$700,000 and a contribution of the Bulgarian Government starting with $40,000, increasing to $70,000 and reaching 140,000 in
the financial year 2009. Since 1993, when the Commission
started operating, the US Government has given over $14m for
the Fulbright exchange with Bulgaria. Bulgaria has contributed a
total of $230,000.
The total investment of $14.23m is at once a small and a
very large amount of money. It very much depends on how you
assess it – in absolute or relative terms. The total investment of a
little over $14m dollars for the Fulbright program in Bulgaria
has created a world-class product: the Bulgarian-American Fulbright community, which today has 917 members (472 Bulgarians and 445 Americans). These are distinguished scholars and
professors from top universities and research institutes in the
two countries, experts, graduate students, high school teachers
and administrators etc. Their intellect, talent and experience
have helped Bulgarian and US education and science by enhancing their quality and opening them to the world. Furthermore,
they have improved the image of Bulgaria and the US, and have
expanded the cultural contacts between the two nations. Last but
by far not least, the Bulgarian and American alumni have stimu263
lated their own growth as individuals, experts and members of
civil society. The ideal Fulbright alumni are highly educated,
competitive, creative and innovative, critical yet tolerant, open
to other cultures and traditions, with leadership and management
qualities and skills, exigent and self-exigent but, above all, free.
The Bulgarian Fulbright Commission offers a rich menu of
short-term and long-term scholarships for lecturing, research,
graduate study, high school teaching, and professional training.
They are awarded after an open competition that usually takes
place in late September every year. Selections are based on the
principles of excellence, binationalism and peer review (Chapter
100 5).
Another important function of the Commission is to disseminate up-to-date information and provide professional guidance on educational and research opportunities in the US. To
this end, right after the establishment of the Commission an advising centre was opened that has hitherto serviced over 220,000
Bulgarian citizens.
The Commission has developed various supplemental activities that have helped establish its reputation as an authoritative
and useful institution actively involved in the educational reforms underway in Bulgaria since the 1990s. In 1995 an English
language training centre was opened which still offers English
language training at all levels and preparatory courses for the
American standardized tests (TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, SAT etc).
The Commission has a computer-based testing centre that administers iBT-TOEFL, GRE, EPSO and other tests.
During the last 16 years the Fulbright Commission has
opened local offices in the cities of Plovdiv, Stara Zagora,
Sliven, Burgas, Shumen, Rousse, Vidin, Smolyan, Kurdjali and
Madan, thus reaching out into communities located beyond regional centres.
The Commission’s cultural activities at home include biennial conferences on topical issues related to internationalization
of education, the growth of civil society, globalization, intercultural relations etc. So far eight such international conferences
have been held with participants mainly from among the Bulgarian and international Fulbright community: “Breaking Barriers
through International Education” in 1994; “Understanding Dif264
ferences and Building Bridges” in 1996; “Education and Civil
Society in the Post-Totalitarian World” in 1998; “Globalization
and Cultural Differences” in 2000; “Knowledge, Power and
Freedom in a Changing World” in 2002; “Strengthening Transatlantic Cooperation and European Integration through Educational and Cultural Exchange” in 2004; “Culture, Education and
Leadership Today and Tomorrow” in 2006; and “Education and
Society: Problems, Prospects, Prognoses” in 2008. These conferences have resulted in the publication of four volumes (Bulgarian-American Fulbright Commission 2000, 2002, 2004,
2006).
In 2002 the Bulgarian Fulbright Commission created the annual Fulbright International Summer Institute (FISI). It is a
unique academic programme that offers a rich variety of interdisciplinary courses and a cultural programme to undergraduate
and graduate students and young researchers from Bulgaria, the
US and other countries in the world. So far the number of
alumni is 289 from 27 countries.
Behind the facts and figures that represent statistically the
manifold activities of the Bulgarian-American Commission for
Educational Exchange stands a larger mission: to raise the quality of both Bulgarian and American education through internationalization. Internationalization as a conscious, rational and
concerted effort holds the key to the survival of education in the
context of merciless and ubiquitous globalization. American
studies (to a lesser degree British studies as well) is a priority
field in this regard. As we very well know, US Studies is a relatively young but rapidly developing academic and research area.
Before the changes in the last decade of the past century its
growth was strictly controlled and its contents and methodology
were subservient to politics and ideology. Today the situation is
radically changed for the better. The field has expanded and is
attracting more and more talented scholars, professors and students. It will not be a gross exaggeration to say that the Bulgarian Fulbright Commission has a finger in this positive process.
In the course of 16 years it has provided the major Bulgarian
Universities – Sofia University, New Bulgarian University, University of Plovdiv, University of Veliko Turnovo, University of
Shumen, Burgas Free University – with American lecturers from
265
prestigious universities. Since 1999 there have been 19 one-term
to one academic year teaching positions for American lecturers
who have taught American and British studies, literature and
English language to undergraduate and graduate students at
these universities. The visiting lecturers have shared their expertise on curriculum development with their colleagues and have
demonstrated the achievements of the US educational system in
class. They have undoubtedly contributed to improving the quality of Bulgarian education in terms of contents, methodology,
information and library resources.
A couple of years ago the Commission participated in a project whose end was to design and introduce an interdepartmental
master’s program in American Studies and Transatlantic relations at Sofia University. The program is gaining in popularity
and attracts more and more talented students from different departments and faculties. Quite of few of the professors involved
in teaching in this program are Bulgarian Fulbright alumni or
US Fulbright grantees.
Additionally, the Bulgarian Fulbright Commission supports
the activities of the Bulgarian American Studies Association
(BASA), co-organizing and co-sponsoring its biennial conferences. To boost American Studies in Bulgaria and broaden their
range, the Commission recently participated in a project for
launching an electronic Journal of American and Transatlantic
Studies (http://www.jatsbulgaria.org). It is a great opportunity
for US Studies scholars in Bulgaria to publish articles, to network with colleagues from Europe, the US and the rest of the
world and get updated on recent trends and developments in the
field.
The Fulbright Commission will never tire of working for international education, for the internationalization of Bulgarian
education, and the development of American studies and English
language training. It will make every effort to expand the Fulbright exchange by providing more and diverse grant opportunities, reliable information and useful guidance as well as by helping establish international undergraduate and graduate programs
in Bulgarian universities.
266
Notes
1
Julia Stefanova is Executive Director of the Bulgarian-American Fulbright Commission.
2
Bi-nationalism in Academic Exchanges is defined in Chapter 100:
Program Planning and Administration, article 110.2.
Works Cited
Bulgarian-American Fulbright Commission. Globalization and
Cultural Differences, Proceedings of the Fourth Fulbright
Conference, Sofia, May 19-21, 2000. Sofia: BulgarianAmerican Commission for Educational Exchange, 2000.
Bulgarian-American Fulbright Commission. Knowledge, Power
and Freedom in a Changing World, Proceedings of the Fifth
Fulbright Conference, Sofia, May 16-18, 2002. Sofia: Bulgarian-American Commission for Educational Exchange, 2002.
Bulgarian-American Fulbright Commission. Strengthening
Transatlantic Cooperation and European Integration
through Educational and Cultural Exchange, Proceedings of
the Sixth Fulbright Conference, Pamporovo, July 31 – August 1, 2004. Sofia: Bulgarian-American Commission for
Educational Exchange, 2004. CD.
Bulgarian-American Fulbright Commission. Culture, Education
and Leadership Today and Tomorrow, Proceedings of the
Seventh Fulbright Conference, Sofia, May 12-13, 2006,
Sofia: Bulgarian-American Commission for Educational
Exchange, 2006. CD.
Chapter 100: Program Planning and Administration. 18 Sept.
2009.
< http://fulbright.state.gov/uploads/aD/tI/
aDtIPvPex1PP9NKB6XdqVQ/chap100.pdf>.
Fulbright-Hays Act. 1946. 25 July 2009.
<http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/iegps/
fulbrighthaysact.pdf>.
Fulbright, James William. Remarks on the Occasion of the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Fulbright Program, 1976.
Journal of American and Transatlantic Studies. 25 July 2009.
<http://www.jatsbulgaria.org>.
267
Part IV
The Comparative Perspective
19
Back to the Pre-history of English
Literary Studies in Bulgaria:
Ivan Shishmanov’s Academic Project
Cleo Protohristova
The research presented in this paper retraces the initial steps of
university lecturing on English literature in Bulgaria. Those
early efforts were consolidated within the framework of Professor Ivan Shishmanov’s courses in General and Comparative Literary History at the St Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia,
carried out with certain interruptions between 1889 and 1928
(for details see Vesselinov 2008). It seems legitimate to regard
these lectures as the initiation of academic English literature
teaching in Bulgaria, since it was not until 1923 that Konstantin
Stefanov, the first professor of English language and literature,
started his English literature lectures. In this paper I focus exclusively on Shishmanov’s course in eighteenth-century West
European literature for two reasons. To begin with, Shishmanov’s lectures on eighteenth-century West-European literature are the ones that are best documented among his numerous
and diverse academic endeavours. A representative selection of
these were published in an impressively comprehensive volume,
Sravnitelna literaturna istoriya na XVIII vek (angliyska, frenska
i nemska literatura) in Selected Works, volume 3 (Shishmanov
1971). In addition, these lectures provide an excellent opportunity for analysing the specificity of this unprecedented Bulgarian
account of English literature against the backdrop of literatures
of the Enlightenment from other West-European countries, specifically France and Germany.
In this paper I examine three key aspects of Shishmanov’s
course. First, I discuss the syllabus of the course and its internal
logic. Then I draw comparisons between the parts of the course
dedicated to the different European national literatures during
271
the eighteenth century. And, finally, I attempt to elucidate the
rationale of the eighteenth-century English literature module of
the course in relation to eighteenth century West European literature, and thus clarify its normative function. An underlying
argument in my interpretation is that Ivan Shishmanov’s course
in the comparative history of West-European literatures resonates with his overall academic project.
It is important to note that Shishmanov’s teaching of English
literature went beyond his lectures on the eighteenth century.
His numerous lectures on Renaissance literature and especially
his continuous engagement with Shakespeare’s work prove to be
an extremely valuable and informative source. There are literally
thousands of pages dedicated to Shakespeare in Shishmanov’s
archive. His interpretations of Renaissance literature in England
and his views on its relation to humanistic writings in Italy or
France present a separate issue that is worth investigating further. Strangely enough, neither the lectures focused on Shakespeare, nor those dedicated to eighteenth century English literature, have yet been subjected to the scrutiny they deserve.
As already indicated, Shishmanov’s lectures on English literature were designed as a separate module of a general course
on the literature of the Enlightenment period. The lectures on
English literature followed directly after the introductory survey
lectures on the Enlightenment in general and on the comparative
study of eighteenth century West-European literature. In the introduction to the English literature module Shishmanov presented his programme, which included, in his own words, a history of English poetry, a survey of the English bourgeois novel
of the century and a history of English drama, tragedy and comedy, as well as the “resurrection“ of Shakespeare, almost forgotten in the 17th century. The authors included in the separate parts
were as follows:
Poetry:
Alexander Pope, James Thompson, Edward
Young, James Macpherson, Thomas Chesterton
and Robert Burns;
Novelists: Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett, Lawrence
Sterne, Oliver Goldsmith;
272
Bourgeois drama: George Lillo;
Comedy: Richard Sheridan;
Literary criticism: Samuel Johnson.
Besides these, a special part addressed “the resurrection” of
Shakespeare in the eighteenth century.
In the context of the entire course the contents of the module
testifies to Shishmanov’s special interest in English literature or
marked preference for it. This is evident in the number of writers, poets and playwrights included. The comparison between
the constituent parts of the course dedicated to the various national literatures shows that English literature is represented by
sixteen authors, French literature by seven (Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau, Bernarden de Sent Pierre, Beaumarchais, and Mirabeau), and German literature by only six
(Gottsched, Klopstock, Wieland, Lessing, Herder, and Goethe).
The disproportion looms even more conspicuous in view of the
European perception of the eighteenth century as “a French century” and as “the age of the encyclopaedists.” Shishmanov repeatedly emphasized the crucial importance of cultural processes
in England for the development of Enlightenment literature in
other countries of Europe and charted a map of influences. His
pronounced interest in English literature was also manifested in
his treatment of the comparative characteristics of the different
national literatures, wherein English literature was usually presented as the paragon. Also, the text of his lectures reveals a
greater interest in the reception of English authors and their works
in France and Germany than in the reception respectively of
French or German literature. For instance, he provided extensive
information about Alexander Pope’s reception in Europe (Shishmanov 1971: 67) and about Richardson’s influence on German
and Russian literature (69), emphasized Fielding’s impact on the
development of the European novel (119) and mentioned particularly the reception of his work by Lessing and Goethe (125). Additionally, he traced Swift’s influence on Rousseau (133) and Voltaire’s imitation of Swift in Mikromegas (140).
Ivan Shishmanov’s approach to eighteenth-century English
literature corresponded to his take on Enlightenment literature
generally and informed the overall model of his lecture course.
This take was panoramic and rationalized as a process; it was
273
based on the interrelatedness between general principles and
specific national peculiarities, and accordingly functioned in the
mode of a consciously maintained, although not completely sufficient, contrastive analysis. Further, it was founded on a balance
between objective historical data and subjective creative approaches, as well as between collective attitudes and individual
psychology. When discussing Swift, for example, Shishmanov
firmly emphasized the specificities of his temperament (the
writer was repeatedly qualified as a misanthropist) and the fact
that he belonged to the bourgeois class (124-25). In a similar
manner, he characterized the peculiarities of Fielding’s novels as
follows:
Fielding is in many respects a synthesis between Richardson
and Swift. Like the first, Fielding is a representative exactly
of the bourgeois family novel, but it is the novel of the more
select, more subtle, more literary educated bourgeoisie, the
right wing. Very much like Swift, he is witty, ingenious and
a publicist. But Fielding represents, remember this, an absolutely new element of the English novel. This is the humour,
the naïve, but also subtle joyfulness, which is as much different from the puritanical somberness of Richardson, as it
differs from the caustic satire of the always seething with
rage and always indignant Swift. (136)
Shishmanov professed a strongly enthusiastic attitude towards
the eighteenth century itself. He found sound reasons for his
admiration for the Enlightenment spirit and its “architects,”
which included the democratic strivings of the epoch, the ideas
of development and progress, the beauty of the slogan “brotherhood, equality, and liberty.” Such a general approach encouraged the reading of eighteenth century English authors predominantly according to the framework of Enlightenment ideology.
Within the logic of the general course in the comparative
history of West-European literatures, the lectures on the eighteenth century had a further and different sort of significance.
Shishmanov’s decision to set the Middle Ages and the end of the
eighteenth century as the borders of his series of courses is indicative. His decision to deliberately disregard the nineteenthcentury conferred additional significance to the eighteenth, and
turns it into the terminal point of a teleological model of the de274
velopment of literary history. The latter relied on sociology, evolutionism, and some sort of discreet – yet quite perceptible –
philosophy of history as its methodological props.
In presenting and rationalizing the eighteenth century
Shishmanov did not remain within the limits of an implicit axiological modus. He clearly and emphatically articulated his conviction in the exceptional significance of the Enlightenment period. On the one hand, he defined the scale of this significance in
terms of the realities of the epoch (the intensive spiritual life, the
pre-revolutionary energy, and the astounding intellectual and
aesthetic achievements). On the other hand, he was concerned
with the substantial and exceptionally intensive relation between
the Enlightenment world and his own contemporary world. According to Shishmanov, the age of Enlightenment was “that
spiritual laboratory where the larger part of the spiritual principles on which contemporary Europe rests, was produced” (34).
Without doubt, he regarded literature as “the promoter, the disseminator and partially the creator of those principles” (34). “If
we speak frankly,” Shishmanov observed, “we have to admit
that practically we are still living with the traditions of the eighteenth century with its corresponding political and social ideas”
(30). Thus, in the flow of Shishmanov’s scholarly work of marking significances and making qualifications, the Enlightenment
appeared as the ongoing project of modernity, thus anticipating
theoretical frameworks which were formulated much later. In
many respects his approach to the eighteenth century might be
reasonably considered to rest in overvaluation. For him the
Enlightenment was “one of the most famous epochs in the life
not just of Europe but also of all humankind” (30).
Another feature of Shishmanov’s eighteenth-century literature
course was its strongly expressed auto-reflexivity. He continuously subjected his own methodological choices and arguments to
analysis. He provided numerous formulations and reformulations
of his understanding of the interrelation between literary historical
and social historical processes; insisted that there could be no alternative to the comparative method of exploring and teaching
West-European literatures; and spoke to justify the so-called
“psychosociological method” which he applied in his studies (see
Likova 1972, Dimov 1985, Schwarz 1988, Hadzhikosev 1993,
275
Damyanova 2005). Further information on Shishmanov’s approach to the English authors discussed in his course can be
gleaned, for example, from his notes from 16 November 1919
where he discusses with Ivan Vazov his ideas about Richard
Sheridan and Samuel Johnson, as well as about eighteenth century
interest in Shakespeare and Garrick’s contribution to the revival
of his works (Shishmanov 2003: 286). In the initial part of the
course Shishmanov’s lectures were on books of practical theory,
in which the subject of contemplation was not so much on the literary material as on literary history itself. Shishmanov clarified
his disagreements in principle with certain historians and theoreticians of literature (especially energetic was his polemic against
Hegel and Taine), expressed his agreement with others (such as
Gustave Lanson, Ferdinand Brunetiere, Plekhanov), and subjected
statements by authors to sceptical analysis.
A specific characteristic of Shishmanov’s lectures on English literature was that they expressed the point of view of a
Bulgarian scholar. The comparative perspective extended not
only to the interpretation of the three separate national literatures, it also produced original juxtapositions of English and
Bulgarian authors. Thus John Toland and Alexander Pope were
compared to Khristo Botev (Shishmanov 1971: 48, 67). This
strategy was perfectly natural at that historical moment, soon
after the Liberation, when teaching foreign literatures was also a
matter of constructing the Bulgarian literary canon as well as the
idea of a national cultural identity. Shishmanov was very much
involved in that process, in his capacity both of a professor of
literature and a minister of education.
Another obvious peculiarity of the course was its enviable
lavishness in terms of curriculum space allocation. From certain
observations that Shishmanov inserted in his lectures it is clear
that the course used to stretch over several (minimum three) semesters, each of them dedicated to a single national literary tradition. Unfortunately records of the lecture schedule have not
been maintained in the archives of the University of Sofia, and
the actual process of the course can only be indirectly reconstructed from sporadic traces to be found in the official minutes
of the University’s academic meetings (for partial information
about the courses of foreign languages programmes, see Veseli276
nov 2008) and in the diaries that Shishmanov kept most of his
life (some published in Shishmanov 2003).
In terms of content, the module on English literature particularly and the course as a whole generally was predominantly factual and biographically oriented. In some cases (such as the lecture on Defoe, for example) the biographical data was disproportionately emphasized. Occasionally, Shishmanov provided extensive psychological portraits of the authors in question, foregrounding a huge number of facts and details. But despite such
extensive evidencing these passages appear excessive and not to
the purpose. It is interesting that the presentation of English authors was much more “disciplined” compared to those of French
writers, such as for Voltaire and Rousseau, in which the emphasis on biography often goes overboard. And yet, it would not be
unjustified to regard the biographical references in Shishmanov’s account of Jonathan Swift as rather too circumstantial,
especially in the discussion of his intimate relations with the notorious “Stella” and “Vanessa” (110-11).
One of the most interesting issues emerging from a reading
of Shishmanov’s lectures concerns their implied audience. It is
not sufficient to say that Shishmanov addressed his course to
well-educated students. He expected the addressee of his ideas
to possess solid experience in the humanities and an enviable
proficiency in foreign languages. This is evident from the numerous references to various kinds of texts and authorship, the
recurrent historical allusions, and the profusion of quotations in
the original language. At the same time, there is evidence that
students were not required to have read the authors discussed in
advance. Most telling among his strategies in this respect was
Shishmanov’s practice of retelling the contents of different
works, sometime in great detail – as in the discussion of Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock (64-66) or Swift’s The Battle
of Books (108-9). Even Gulliver’s Travels was presented with a
detailed summary (113-16).
Beyond such evidence of the scholar’s particular teaching
methods, there are other, more subtle indications, such as his
habitual practice in the course of lectures to make comprehensive excursions into literature of the Renaissance period or of the
seventeenth century. The contents and character of these excur277
sions suggest that Shishmanov expected students attending the
eighteenth century literature course to be acquainted with lectures on earlier periods. The many parallels between Enlightenment literature and Renaissance and Classical literature that appeared in the general outlines of the course, as well as in the
characterizations of eighteenth century authors, came with the
presumption that such knowledge is not just unconditionally
necessary for students but already cultivated. This implicit attitude in Shishmanov’s style of lecturing testifies to the course’s
subordination to the academic imperative of Bildung. More precisely, Shishmanov viewed his separate courses in general and
comparative literary history as constituents of an integral project, which aimed to lay the foundations of a solid, logically
structured and reliably coordinated knowledge about the entire
history of literatures in West-European countries. At the same
time, Sishmanov’s manner of presentation in his lectures suggests that he was confident of being able to initiate a community
of followers through his efforts. He expected to nurture people
who, while sharing a mutual interest in comparative studies of
West-European literatures, would take part in a kind of social
(and academic) contract, whereby a certain intellectual and spiritually uplifting distance would come to prevail.
The final section of this paper concerns the normative function that Shishmanov eighteenth-century English literature module can be put to in relation to current courses in the field. There
are indicative parallels that may be drawn here between the current West-European-literature exam questions lists for Bulgarian
philology students (BA programmes) from several Bulgarian
universities, such as the Universities of Sofia, Veliko Turnovo,
Shumen and the Southwestern University in Blagoevgrad.
If regarded as functioning in rapport with the academic tradition established by Shishmanov, these syllabi provide telling
observations. The common tendencies at present, in terms of
choice and justification of material, are towards limitation and
simplification. These tendencies should be understood in the
context of the current curriculum space provided for West European Literature courses, which is comparatively modest at 75 to
90 contact hours (in view of Shishmanov’s course which ran for
at least three terms). Most often English eighteenth century lit278
erature is confined to the study of novels, and that too in a limited way – usually including only Defoe and Swift, and, very
occasionally, also Fielding and Sterne. In one of the exam questions lists from the University of Sofia (www.portal.unisofia.bg/docs/slav/konspekti.../zaplit.doc), where the formulations of the topics have a more general and theoretical character,
eighteenth century literature is presented in two basic themes:
“The Enlightenment: philosophical, aesthetic and socio-political
aspects of literature. Approbation of publicity, progress and decline of the Enlightenment rationalism” and “The dialogue between literary and paraliterary genres in the novel of the Enlightenment. The dismantling of the genre: provocation and demasquing of the narrative techniques.” Eighteenth century English
authors specifically named in the list of mandatory readings include Defoe with Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, Swift
with Gulliver’s Travels, Fielding with Tom Jones and Sterne’s
Sentimental Journey. In another exam questions list
(www.slav.uni-sofia.bg/Subjects/bfwestlit.html) the lectures on
eighteenth century literature are reduced to a survey of the
European novel in terms of the historical development of the
genre. English literature of the age is represented here only by
Defoe with Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders and Swift with
Gulliver’s Travels. In the programme of the University of Shumen (www.shu-bg.net/) the themes “Specificities of the English
Novel from the Age of the Enlightenment: Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe, Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels” and “The Sentimental Novel” are to be found. The latter includes Sterne’s
Sentimental Journey alongside Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young
Werther. In the somewhat more ambitious examination questionnaire from the University of Veliko Turnovo (www.univt.bg/show_uchp.asp?nspec=000014&ndiscipl=1998321&filena
me= BF_Z_ZapEvrLit.doc) there is a special section on eighteenth century philosophy in which John Locke and Shaftesbury
appear. The literature of the epoch is seen exclusively through
the novel again, and the authors under discussion are Defoe,
Swift and Richardson. The course at the Southwestern University (www.philo.swu.bg/Doc/.../BF.../8-zel.bf.sadarganie.doc) is
no exception to the general tendency to focus on the novel but
the number of authors considered is larger – Defoe, Sterne,
279
Richardson, Fielding, and Swift. In my view, the eighteenthcentury English literature module of Shishmanov’s course on
General and Comparative Literary History is comparable at present only to the programmes of specialized English literature
courses taught at English philology departments.
Some aspects of Shishmanov’s module on eighteenth century English literature may seem debatable from a contemporary
perspective on the English literary canon. We may take issue
with the outdated transliteration of certain names and the rather
arguable interpretations of Sterne’s work that appeared there, as
well as with the lack of awareness about the distinction between
English and British authors. The latter is in fact still the case for
West European literature courses in Bulgaria, and such awareness is only occasionally registered in sporadic literature courses
of English Departments. Despite all that, Ivan Shishmanov’s
lecture course could certainly be labelled as the first Bulgarian
academic course in English literature. Moreover, it presented
not just an arbitrary choice of authors or works, appropriate for
specific comparative procedures; it was a profoundly thoughtthrough, comprehensive account of the national eighteenth century literature, which posited a stable course model which is still
valid for contemporary academic purposes.
Works Cited
Damyanova, Rumyana. “Psihosotsialniyat metod na professor
Ivan Shishmanov” [The Psycho-sociological Method of Professor Ivan Shishmanov]. Ivan Shishmanov – forumut. [Ivan
Shishmanov – the Forum] Sofia: BAN, 2005. 42-52.
Dimov, Georgi. “Nemskata literatura ot VІІІ vek prez pogleda
na Ivan Shishmanov” [Eighteen Century German Literature
through the Eyes of Ivan Shishmanov]. Bulgarsko-nemski
literaturni i kulturni vzaimootnosheniya prez ХVІІІ i ХІХ
vek. [Bulgarian-German Literary and Cultural Relations in
the 18th and 19th century] Sofia: 1985. 124-144.
Hadzhikosev, Simeon. “Ivan Shishmanov kato suzdatel na bulgarskoto sravnitelno literaturoznanie” [Ivan Shishmanov as the
Founder of Comparative Literature Studies in Bulgaria]. А...
(Literary Magazine for Pupils). 1993, issue 5-6 (July). 20-25.
280
Likova, Rozaliya. “Psihosotsialniyat metod na Ivan Shishmanov
i niakoi vuprosi na suvremennostta. Tretiyat tom ot Izbrani
suchineniya na Ivan Shishmanov” [The Psycho-sociological
Method of Ivan Shishmanov and Contemporary Issues. The
Third Volume of Ivan Shishmanov’s Selected Works]. Plamuk [Flame], 1972, issue 1. 48-54.
Shishmanov, Ivan. Dnevnik. 1879-1927. [Diary 1879-1927]
Sofia: IK Sineva, 2003.
Shishmanov, Ivan. “Sravnitelna literaturna istoriya na XVIII vek
(angliyska, frenska i nemska literatura)” [18th Century Comparative Literary History (English, French and German Literature)]. Izbrani suchineniya [Selected Works]. Ed. Georgi
Dimov, Vol. 3, Sofia: BAN, 1971.
Schwarz, Wolfgang F. “Ivan Sismanovs Leipziger Doktorarbeit.
Methodologische, wissenschaftshistorische und –soziologische Bemerkungen“. Nemsko-bulgarski kulturni otnosheniya. 1978-1918. [German-Bulgarian Cultural Relations
1978-1918] Sofia, 1988. 244-252.
Vesselinov, Dimitar. Letopisna kniga na Fakulteta po klasicheski i novi filologii (1888-1965). [Annals of the Faculty of
Classical and New Philologies (1888-1965)] Sofia: St. Kliment Okhridski University Press, 2008.
281
20
Myth and Ideology: British Romanticism
in Comparative Literature Textbooks
Vitana Kostadinova
Romanticism is being represented in various ways in literary
historiographies and its canon has been frequently modified ever
since the first constructions of the Romantic Age. Regardless of
the inevitable theoretical debates and clashes, the field currently
accommodates both the advocates of old aestheticism and the
warriors of new historicism. In 1953 Abrams renewed the “Arnoldian reading of Romanticism as autonomy from politics”
(Klancher 1989: 84), arguing that the aim of any good aesthetic
theory is “not to establish correlations between facts which will
enable us to predict the future by reference to the past, but to
establish principles enabling us to justify, order, and clarify our
interpretation and appraisal of the aesthetic facts themselves”
(Abrams 1971: 4). Needless to say, aestheticism did not reign
unchallenged; Abrams himself considered the Romantics in
view of “the spirit of the age” (1962), but as late as 1994 a new
reaction against over-politicising the discourse of literary criticism exploded the peaceful transition to a new-historicist mode
of thinking:
The movement from within the tradition cannot be ideological, or place itself in the service of any social aims, however
morally admirable. One breaks into the canon only by aesthetic strength, which is constituted primarily of an amalgam: mastery of figurative language, originality, cognitive
power, knowledge, exuberance of diction. [...] Whatever the
Western Canon is, it is not a program for social salvation.
(Bloom 1994: 27-8)
In the meantime, the assertion that “the scholarship and criticism
of Romanticism and its works are dominated by a Romantic
Ideology, by an uncritical absorption in Romanticism’s own
283
self-representations” (McGann 1983: 1) had marked the beginning of a new Marxist era in Romantic studies, even though the
old one was still alive and kicking in the then communist bloc.
Considered from within the bloc, communism was the vision of
the bright future, while the present was socialism put into practice.
Resorting to one of those former socialist states, this essay
discusses the academic constructions of British Romanticism in
two Bulgarian language textbooks of Comparative Literature,
Mitov and Peshev's The Literature of Western Europe from the
French Revolution to the Paris Commune (1963) and Hadzhikosev's West-European Literature, Part Three (2005).1 In its
heyday, the former was the ultimate socialist source on the subject; alternatives only appeared in the last twenty years. The latter was published in 2005 as part of a larger project addressed to
students of literature as well as to a wider reading public. Both
textbooks outline national romanticisms, which makes it easier
to compare and contrast their respective representations. Both
talk about England, not Britain, and refer to the works and authors as English rather than British. Understandably, both are
exponents of, to borrow Wellek’s phrase, “the unity of European
Romanticism” (Wellek 1949: 147).
The Literature of Western Europe dates back to 1963. The
section on Romanticism was written by D. B. Mitov, who, judging by the occasional footnotes, has drawn upon French and
Russian sources and has quoted Marx, Engels and Lenin for
good measure; customarily, Bulgarian textbooks do not provide
references or bibliographies. Mitov’s chapter on Romanticism in
England is the lengthiest at eighty-nine pages; by comparison,
thirty-two pages are allotted to Germany, sixty-seven to France,
sixteen to Italy, and eight to Austria. Its quality is however suspect; in Simeon Hadzhikosev’s unrelentingly fastidious judgement: “the chapter on English Romanticism does not meet any
scholarly criteria; by way of consolation, the chapter on German
Romanticism is even worse” (Hadzhikosev 2005: 311).
In the context of socialism, discussing the social and historical setting is of paramount importance for literary criticism and
an outline of the events of the day provides the introductory
lines to the English Romantics. By the second paragraph Mitov
284
claims that Byron is the most important representative of the
period (61). Later on, readers are informed that Byron and Shelley shaped English Romanticism as revolutionary romanticism
and changed the course of the literary trend (64). The figures of
the period are interpreted as progressive or reactionary and the
latter deserve merely a mention. Thus, “the Lake school of poetry” is explored within four pages or so, and Wordsworth and
Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads are stigmatised as the manifesto of
English reactionary romanticism (66, 67). Mitov’s attitude towards the older Romantics may appear inconsistent to many
scholars because in a gesture of disregard for Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey, Francis Jeffrey, who coined the phrase
“Lake-school”, referred to them as a “sect of poets” and “dissenters from the established systems in poetry and criticism”,
and inferred that “A splenetic and idle discontent with the existing institutions of society, seems to be at the bottom of all their
serious and peculiar sentiments.” (Jeffrey 1802: 71). Explicating
Jeffrey’s sentiments, David Perkins has pointed out, “To compare them to Dissenters was not yet to call them revolutionaries,
but the Dissenters [...] were frequently associated with radical
causes and agitation [...]. Fear of revolution, in other words, did
not influence merely Jeffrey’s characterisation of them; it also
prompted him to see them as a group” (Perkins 1992: 90). Thus,
the “Lake school” recalls the revolutionary turmoil that the
moderate Whig of The Edinburgh Review associated with these
poets in 1802. Nevertheless, Mitov defames them for betraying
the ideals of their youth. Southey is denigrated as a renegade and
a champion of obscurantism and it seems that everything we
need to know about him can be found in Byron’s Dedication to
Don Juan. It is no secret that “Byron held a lifelong grudge
against the poet laureate and at last had his famous and most
thorough revenge in Don Juan, where Southey is made a symbol
of all that is hateful and despicable in poetry, in politics, and in
hypocrisy” (Jackson 2009: 108). Nevertheless, Mitov offers
Byron’s animosity in lieu of a critical evaluation of Southey’s
works.
In Mitov’s account Thomas Moore bridges the gap between
reactionism and progress, his major culpability being that he
gave in to peer-pressure and allowed the reactionaries to destroy
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Byron’s memoirs. Walter Scott, Byron, Shelley, and Keats get
their own subchapters. Walter Scott’s historical novels exonerate
his political conservatism because in his narratives he more often than not takes the side of the people (74). The textbook offers critical summaries of Waverley, Guy Mannering, Old Mortality, Rob Roy, Ivanhoe, and Quentin Durward. The next thirtysix pages are dedicated to Byron, “one of the greatest poets in
world literature and a major representative of the revolutionarydemocratic tendency in English literature” (90). The latter part
of that statement is what actually matters: in the tradition of the
Bulgarian socialists of the 1890s who declared that Shelley was
the greatest English poet because of his political credo (Den
1892: 493), Mitov prioritises ideology over literariness. The use
of ideology here needs some clarification. I find myself in
agreement with David McLellan, who advises caution: “the simple thought that all views are ideological [...] is so all embracing
as to be almost meaningless” and “contains the same logical absurdity as the declaration of Epimenides the Cretan who declared that all Cretans were liars” (McLellan 1995: 2). For the
purposes of this discussion, it is essential to distinguish between
a philosophical disposition towards Marxism and the political
agenda to subordinate literature to the directives of the (ruling)
party. Therefore, it is not “in the broad sense of thought subject
to social determination that renders it partial” that ideology figures here, but rather “in the more restricted, negative sense of
self-interested illusions perpetuated by social groups” (McLellan
1995: 42), bordering on the “view of ideology as a dogmatic
system linked to totalitarian politics” (Carver 2001: 35).
But when it comes to Byron, it cannot be all ideology: myth
has a lot to do with the poet’s positioning as the most important
Romantic on the Continent. From a Barthesian perspective,
Byron’s appeal would be relying on his all-encompassing reputation; he is, indeed comparable to Barthes’s Einstein: his name
is identified with “the best and the worst”, the man personifies
“the most contradictory dreams”, and his poetry “mythically
reconciles the infinite power of man over nature with the ‘fatality’ of the sacrosanct, which man cannot yet do without”
(Barthes 1999: 70). And it matters not that in the estimation of
many he is “neither a great poet nor a great man who wrote po286
etry” because in the end the myth recasts him as “a tremendous
cultural force that was life and literature at once” (Frye 2005:
56). Thus, Byron’s name becomes normative in Mitov’s textbook: his appreciation of Coleridge’s talent seems to be the recommendation the latter needs (67); Hazlitt’s literary portrait of
the bard is among the more valuable of his essays (71-2); Scott
acknowledges Byron’s supremacy in the field of poetry (73-4);
Shelley is a close friend of the “great poet” (127); and Keats can
be aligned with Byron and Shelley, although he is not as consistent a rebel as those two fighters for freedom and democracy
(148, 149). Not only is Byron the “arch-Romantic” (Frye 2005:
68), his attitudes inform us of literary quality.
An outline of Byron’s life introduces the greatest of poets but
his lordly title is duly censored out of the textbook. His writing is
divided into no less than four periods. Despite the socialist disregard for Nietzsche and the kinship between Byron’s Manfred and
Nietzsche’s Superman, the dramatic poem is discussed as the major achievement of the poet’s Swiss period; the quotations from
the text are in Kiril Khristov’s translation (1920), possibly because Khristov and Mitov were close friends. Byron’s shorter poems are given some attention too, but it is Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage which is discussed in detail. Cain is singled out for
analysis when it comes to the poet’s tragedies and mysteries,
while The Age of Bronze introduces the last period in Byron’s
writing. Bearing in mind that Mitov was a Francophone and a
Russophile, it comes as no surprise that Don Juan is praised as the
wisest and the most profound of Byron’s works. Soviet criticism
detects both romanticism and realism in the poem (comparable to
the transition from romanticism to realism in Pushkin’s “novel in
verse” [cf. Ivask 1954: 170]) and this idea is maintained in the
Bulgarian textbook as well. Interpretations are inevitably in terms
of ideology and in the style of socialist propaganda. Here is a case
in point: Byron is said to have left England in 1816 because the
hypocrites and frauds who ruled the country joined efforts in disparaging him, enraged as they were with his speech on the Luddites; the poet, on the other hand, was frustrated by the expansion
of reactionism in Western Europe and the unheard of exploitation
of the working people and bid his native shores adieu (95-6). According to his biographers, the facts are rather different: “Had the
287
scandal been only of the breakdown of his marriage Byron might,
if he had chosen to do so, have ridden out the storm. It was the
additional element of incest, and more critically sodomy, that
made his departure unavoidable” (McCarthy 2003: 275). But “incest” and “sodomy” must have been the slanders that Mitov is
talking about. The textbook consistently translates literature and
reality into its political jargon but it also renders the unfamiliar in
terms of the familiar. For instance, “claret,” a word from the First
Canto of Don Juan, is footnoted as “English rakiya” (122), which
of course it is not.
In tune with the revolutionary overtones of the socialist reading of Romanticism, Shelley is featured with Queen Mab and
Prometheus Unbound, even if Alastor and Adonais are also discussed. His lyrics are profusely quoted from, making use of the
Bulgarian translations published in the 1959 edition of Shelley’s
poetry. Even Pencho Slavejkov’s poetic elaboration on the
“Heart of hearts” theme (1892, 1907) gets a mention but Teodor
Trayanov’s “Cor cordium” (1929, 1934) is ignored. Whereas the
former was institutionalised by the national curriculum in Bulgarian literature, the latter was a symbolist and, therefore, not in
favour with socialist literary criticism. The overview of Keats
enumerates his longer poems but it seems centred around the
shorter ones available in Bulgarian translation. “La Belle Dame
Sans Merci” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn” come as no surprise
there. His appreciation of nature is preferred to “the mysticism
of the Lakers” (147) and the first two stanzas of “To Autumn”
are quoted to illustrate the beauty of his poetry. It is worth pointing out that Keats was not politicised: this was to come with
new-historicist interpretations of his poetry, according to which
“the truest political poetry often turns out to be that which feigns
its lack of interest in politics” (O’Neill 1995: 146). Nicholas
Roe, for example, maintains that “the conspiracy of sun and season may now appear less of an escape from historical tensions
than as a harvest-home fulfilling the call for justice from ‘the
less fortunate multitude’” in Keats’s “To Autumn” (Roe 1997:
261); with reference to same ode, Andrew Bennett attempts “to
read against the grain, to listen to the fractious intertextual cacophony of history, politics, economics, noises which Autumn
seems to silence” (Bennett 1994:161). Back in the 1960s though,
288
the absence-as-presence approach did not dominate the discourse, so Keats was simply attached to the heroes of the day. It
goes without saying that the uneasy relationship with Byron has
no place in the textbook and the chapter ends with the sonnet
Keats dedicated to Byron and Shelley (149). Regardless of the
leniency to Keats, the ideology of the socialist state governs all
discussions of literariness in the textbook, and Marx and Engels
are the witnesses invited time and again to confirm the literary
verdicts. Until 1989 the volume was the definitive textbook in
Comparative Literature covering the Romantic period but it
seems to be still in use as late as 2005 (Guidelines 2005).
2005 saw the publication of Simeon Hadzhikosev’s textbook
on the literature of the Romantic period. It is part three of a series intended to replace socialist-era editions like Mitov and
Peshev’s The Literature of Western Europe from the French
Revolution to the Paris Commune (11). A volume of nearly six
hundred pages, it only deals with authors who wrote in German
and in English: nearly two hundred pages go under the heading
of German Romanticism, about thirty are concerned with German-Austrian Romanticism, while English Romanticism boasts
more than two hundred and fifty pages. The author refers to Mitov’s outline and to Marco Mincoff’s account of English Romanticism. Mincoff’s History of English Literature (1970) is
written in English and is addressed to students of English Philology. Hadzhikosev discusses the approaches in these two textbooks and observes that Mincoff has paid tribute to “the indecisive estimation of Romanticism” in English studies (Hadzhikosev
2005: 312). Indeed, defining the period seems to be a major dividing line between English Studies Romanticists and Comparative
Literature critics. This said, for his chapter on English Romanticism Hadzhikosev draws upon William Renwick’s and Ian Jack’s
volumes from the Oxford History of English Literature (1963).
Nevertheless, his perspective remains Bulgarian, Balkan, Slavonic, and European, as he himself names the concentric circles
of detachment from the subject of his research (316).
Hadzhikosev refuses to give up the term pre-Romanticism
and firmly places Blake among the pre-Romantics (315). The
collective term “Lakers” is used to refer to Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey, and Thomas de Quincey is added to that
289
poetic generation. Following the European tradition, Byron and
Shelley stand out as the most significant English Romantics
(319). In addition, the critic has employed the phrase “the London circle” with regard to Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb
and Keats, explaining the pejorative connotations of “the cockney school.” He claims that the representatives of German Romanticism appear more unified and consistent in their aesthetics
and poetics. In his introduction to the Lake School, Hadzhikosev
discusses Wordsworth’s theorising as independent of Coleridge’s and postulates that the Lakers are closer to the classicist
understanding of art than Byron is. This section occupies fortyeight pages, out of which eleven belong to Wordsworth, twenty
to Coleridge and nine to Southey. A couple of unexpected encounters include a parallel between Wordsworth and Elin Pelin
(a Bulgarian writer of short stories famous for the gripping realism of country-life depictions) (337), the back-handed compliment to The Prelude, which is “not a mediocre work, even if
nowadays it is not regarded as highly as Wordsworth would
have expected” (341) (in his monograph on The Prelude Stephen
Gill defines it as “landmark” [Gill 1991: 1]), and the comparison
between Blake and Wordsworth as poets of the urban on the
grounds of the sonnet “Composed upon Westminster Bridge,
Sept. 3, 1803” (342) (it is not on an impulse that Wordsworth is
celebrated as a nature poet, he invariably valued the rural over
the urban). The subdivision on Coleridge establishes him as a
great poet; it elaborates on his biography and then focuses on
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan and Christabel.
The critic goes back to the Rime at the beginning of the Southey
subdivision in order to discuss Vessela Gaidarova’s Lake School
(2001) that he belatedly discovered. Thus, the once celebrated
poet-laureate remains in the shadow of Wordsworth and Coleridge even in a Bulgarian overview of the period.
What strikes the reader is the similarity to Mitov’s approach
in reading English Romanticism through Byron: the Rev. William Bowles is introduced as the central character in Byron’s
letter on the Pope-Bowles controversy; the lord’s invitation to
Leigh Hunt to visit him in Italy gets a mention; his dislike for
the Lakers is repeatedly pointed out; his opinion of Coleridge’s
Christabel is quoted at length; his involvement in the publication
290
of the poem is not missed out; and so on and so forth. Byronism
is discussed in detail by way of introducing the rebellious poets
of genius, namely Byron and Shelley, while Keats is grouped
with them by default. Lord Byron’s slot (his title restored) takes
up fifty-seven pages, which makes it the most generous allowance in the textbook. Surprisingly, the references to his life draw
upon Andre Maurois’ biographical novel, Byron (1930), which
the critic recommends to his readers. Hadzhikosev considers
Byron the uncontested spiritual leader of the age (380) and is
nonplussed that Ian Jack does not consider him a great poet
(Jack 1963: 76); further on, he is most bewildered by Mincoff’s
“inexplicable antipathy” for the Romantic (Hadzhikosev 382).
Childe Harold, Manfred, Cain and Don Juan are in the limelight
of the discussion of Byron’s works. The author is reluctant to
close off the section because he would have liked to discuss
more of Byron’s poetry.
Byron is often brought up in the Shelley section as well. The
birth of the heart of hearts myth is ascribed to Byron’s testimony about the cremation of his friend; actually, it was Trelawny who snatched what they thought was the heart, salvaged it
from the fire, and then circulated the story most enthusiastically.
Furthermore, the Bulgarian critic claims that Byron demanded
the cor cordium inscription on Shelley’s tomb in Rome, while it
was Leigh Hunt who suggested the phrase. Hadzhikosev even
supposes Byron the author of “Nothing of him that doth fade, /
But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange”;
the lines are from The Tempest (Shakespeare I.ii.400-402).
These assumptions, following the attention lavished on Paul
Johnson’s essay on Shelley (from his book Intellectuals, 1988),
highlight Hadzhikosev’s impressionistic style of writing. The
author discusses Shelley’s prose and lyrics before switching to
the long poems. The Revolt of Islam and Prometheus Unbound
are recognised as the poet’s most essential works. A free association brings the Bulgarian poet Khristo Botev into the discussion to illustrate the impact of the Shelleyan idea that love and
happiness are impossible without freedom, and therefore freedom fighting takes precedence over private life. Simeon Hadzhikosev ends the Shelley section with a few lines on “Peter Bell
291
the Third” rather than with a discussion of “Adonais” and this
means more parallels with Byron’s Don Juan.
Giving an account of Keats’s life, the critic points to the lack
of a “Romantic personality” comparable to Byron’s or Shelley’s
(489). (In his opinion, this is Wordsworth’s problem too [333].)
He then goes through Keats’s major poems and ends on a biographical note, evaluating Keats’s fate as existentially more tragic
than the theatrical lives of the other two of the great English Romantics, which calls for our human sympathy. The concluding
sketch is that of Walter Scott. Hadzhikosev explains his decision
to place him at the end by referring to Ian Jack’s volume on Romanticism and by arguing that Byron’s poetry and Scott’s novels
appeared simultaneously on the European stage. Later on the
critic offers his analysis of their reception at the start of Byron’s
career. But the analogy between the two is taken further by a psychoanalytical interpretation of their choice of the mermaid as a
symbol in their respective coats-of-arms: Hadzhikosev assumes
both men must have been proud of their limp. Byron wasn’t.
What seems true enough, nevertheless, is that they both had a leg
to stand on when it came to controversial issues and, maybe, they
both preferred swimming to walking – or at least Byron did.2
Hadzhikosev relies heavily on biographical detail and his
term “Romantic personality” confirms that the lives of the Romantics are an essential aspect of his understanding of the period. He distances himself from the Marxist teleological approach to literary phenomena (11) and describes Romanticism as
“a literary style,” “a worldview,” and “an experience of the
world” (18). The scholar seems preoccupied with generic labels
as if labels would bring order to the chaos of Romantic dispositions. His canon does not radically differ from the Romantic
canon in Mitov and Peshev's textbook – Hadzhikosev does discuss Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey at greater length but
his decision to qualify Blake as a pre-Romantic and therefore
ignore him does not allow for the return of the repressed. Blake
is more or less absent from the socialist period. Up to his bicentenary in 1957 there are no Bulgarian translations of his works
and entries in reference books and encyclopaedias are only occasional and brief (cf. Lyubenov 2000: 98-104). The poet is not
even mentioned in Mitov and Peshev’s The Literature of West292
ern Europe, although he produces his works after the French
revolution.3
Hadzhikosev’s construction of Romanticism focuses on the
rise of the individual. As ideas translate better than the beauty of
poetry, these are naturally favoured in foreign language discussions of verse. It comes as no surprise then that Byron’s European triumph owes to a life and poetry inspiring the rise of the
individual. Philosopher Bertrand Russell notes that the poet is
adequately appreciated on the Continent but deserves a higher
place in the English-speaking world (Russell 1940: 24), and
goes on to affirm that “The romantic movement, in which Byron
was the most romantic figure, aimed at liberating human personality from the fetters of social convention and social morality”
(37). An aristocratic rebel defying norms and the laws of creation itself (it must be for a reason that he is demonised as the
central figure of a Satanic school [cf. Butler 1993: 141]), Byron
checked his downfall by investing his passion into revolutionary
activity. Although Marx had seen him as a would-be “reactionary bourgeois had he lived longer” (Marx and Engels 1976:
320), Gorky’s distinction of passive versus active Romanticism
(Gorky et al 2000: 10) afforded him most amiable treatment on
this side of the iron curtain. Thus, myth and ideology attempted
a peaceful coexistence in the Bulgarian socialist era. But with
the iron curtain drawn aside and Byron still on the Comparative
Literature stage, myth seems to have superseded ideology.
Notes
1
In Bulgaria, academic courses in Comparative Literature are included
in the curricula for philology students at undergraduate level and are
taught in Bulgarian. They offer an overview of Ancient Greek, Roman,
and West-European Literature.
2
Some of quotations on the topic of Byron’s deformity from Fiona
MacCarthy’s Life of Byron (2003):
“He was always to be conscious that his lameness marked him out as a
freak and an object of derision, discounting the degree to which his deformed leg contributed to his image of perverse attractiveness.” (4)
“Byron learned to manipulate his fame, avoiding appearing in public in
the morning, steering clear of situations where his lameness would
show him at a disadvantage.” (161)
293
“On the subject of Byron’s remarkable amphibiousness another of his
swimming companions made the comment that, while obviously
handicapped in riding, fencing and even walking, ‘in the water a fin is
better than a foot, and in that element he did well; he was built for
floating – with a flexible body, open chest, broad beam, and round
limbs’.”(342-3)
3
Only a few poems are printed in the press in December 1957 and
January 1958; a few more appear a decade later, one of them being
included in an anthology of love lyrics from around the world (1967).
It is not until 1983 that a collection of his poems is published in Spas
Nikolov’s translation. Ludmila Kostova, whose doctoral research is on
William Blake, testifies that the poet was considered problematic in the
socialist era and Spas Nikolov was instructed to translate only poems
included in the Soviet edition of his poems.
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York: Oxford University Press, 1971.
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Bennett, Andrew. Keats, Narrative and Audience: The Posthumous Life of Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994.
Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1994.
Butler, Marilyn. “Culture’s Medium: The Role of the Review”. The
Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism. Ed. Stuart
Curran. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Carver, Terrel. “Did Ideology Fall with 'the Wall'? Marx, Marxism, Post-Marxism.” Reassessing Political Ideologies: The
Durability of Dissent. Ed. Michael Freeden. London:
Routledge, 2001. 35-48.
Den.“Edin poet sotsialist” [“A Poet Socialist”] Den [Day] 1892,
7: 490-492.
Frye, Northrop. “Lord Byron.” Northrop Frye’s Writings on the
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Ed. Imre Salusinszky.
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Gaidarova, Vessela. Lake School/Ezerna oblast. Bilingua Series.
Sofia: Letera, 2001.
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Gorky, Maxim, et al. The Art and Craft of Writing. Trans. Alex
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Chuzhdestranna literatura. [Guidelines for the Student. Library and Information Technologies Major. Full/Part-time.
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13:3, 1954. 167-175.
Jack, Ian. English Literature 1815-1832. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963.
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Byron and the Isles of Imagination: A Romantic Chart.
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Jeffrey, Francis. “Thalaba, the Destroyer: A Metrical Romance.
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evropeiskata literatura v Bulgaria: Angliiska literatura [Reception of European Literature in Translation in Bulgaria:
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21
Studying the Gothic Novel from
a Comparative Perspective:
Issues of Translation and Canonization
Ognyan Kovachev
In this paper I present and discuss my observations on and experience of researching and teaching the British Gothic novel, as
a literary and aesthetic phenomenon, in Bulgaria. There are a
number of reasons for studying the Gothic novel within the
frame of Comparative Literature in the Bulgarian context. To
begin with, it seems to be found in a more integral and systematic mode precisely in the domain of Comparative Literature
here rather than in that of English Literature, where the Gothic is
perhaps more at home. But this is a rather accidental circumstance, and dwelling on it might give rise to a conflict of faculties, albeit of a non-Kantian sort. I therefore move promptly to
another more obvious and at the same time more abstract reason.
This other reason has to do with the apparent discontinuity
between the subject of study and the context where study is undertaken. My choice of the British Gothic Revival as a dissertation subject in the early 1990s in Sofia evoked encouraging curiosity among some colleagues and scepticism or even derisive
dismissiveness among others. The distance between the Gothic
tradition on the one hand and the Bulgarian cultural and mental
and academic tradition on the other hand seemed to make the
dialogue between subject and context next to impossible. However, certain critical ideas about history came to my aid, according to which the existence of and interactions between traditions
are not given in terms of a petrified cultural heritage but are developed through critical and/or theoretical discussion.
My strategy was to turn those perceived lacks and impossibilities into resources for my research. Instead of trying to circumvent them I attempted to use them as means of discerning
297
and articulating various problems. This was effectively my epistemological frame, which I thought of as the application of a
“principle of the constitutive blank.” The principle presupposes
an attitude towards the past that differs from habitual straightforward historical narrative and is akin to Michel Foucault’s
well-known conception of the discursive character of human
knowledge (see Foucault 1981, Foucault 1984). Approached
thus, critical and historical engagement consists in looking at a
series of incomplete descriptions, and forming a possible genealogy of the studied object – an open system, connecting constitutive lacks, ruptures, heterogeneous fissures and discontinuities.
Genealogy is not a teleological narration that aims chiefly at
maintaining and strictly guarding its linear coherence and nonconflicting inner logic. Its textual corpus is better described as a
multilayered palimpsest, in which erased, rewritten and piled up
scriptures contain traces of non-hierarchically interrelated discourses. The processes of deciphering and disentangling the
various discursive practices bring to light their dynamics, reversibility, mutual exclusiveness and conventional underpinnings. At the same time they attest to the self-conscious capacity
of the genealogical recreation of the past.
So, the second reason for my undertaking a comparative
study of the Gothic novel was because it enabled me to transfer
a typically British literary genre of the Late Enlightenment/Early
Romanticism into the radically different Bulgarian temporal,
linguistic, territorial, cultural, historical etc. environment. A
third reason arises from the implicitly heterogeneous context of
the original Gothic novel (1764-1820). The latter comprehends a
rich network of topics, such as architecture, history, family and
kinship, the origin of the nation, dreams, the supernatural, the
sublime and the horrible or terrible, genius, the nature and
knowledge, sight and the other senses. Further, a fourth reason
derives from the multifarious critical, academic, canonical, aesthetic and sociological re-evaluations of the Gothic that have
taken place, alongside the consolidation of Neo-Gothic culture
in North America and Western Europe over the last fifty years.
In Bulgaria a process of “Gothicization” began only after 1990. I
focus here in more detail on two aspects of British Gothic literature: the reception and transformation of the genre and its canon
in Bulgaria, and the translatability and/or misreading of core
298
works and terms therein. I hope thus to acquire a more functional understanding of the area both in the Bulgarian context
and in a comparative perspective than is available at present.
The most active processes of mediation which are germane
to my approach to the area are translation, readers’ and critics’
responses, and academic study. However, for the context discussed here these remain in the background, and the penetration,
engrafting or inscribing of Gothic elements in Bulgarian literary
and cultural perception remains largely unidentified and unrealized. Leaving aside the two translations (1919 and 1975) of R.
L. Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886),
which have failed to strike gothic roots in our native soil, the
first integral Bulgarian translation of a classical Gothic novel is
of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, published in 1981. It was followed soon by translations of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of
Otranto (1764) and William Beckford’s Vathek (1786), issued
together with Frankenstein (1818) under the title Gothic Novels
(1984) in a volume of the representative “World Classics Library” series. All three novels were translated by Zhechka Georgieva. It may be justifiably assumed that their publication in
such an authoritative series should have had a legitimizing and
canonizing influence on the reception of the Gothic genre in
Bulgaria. Unfortunately the impact was negligible. The works of
important Gothic authors, such as Ann Radcliffe, Charles
Maturin, William Godwin and Mathew G. Lewis are still unavailable in Bulgarian. The random and unsystematic approach
to the Gothic here is evidenced by the fact that Lewis’s notorious novel The Monk (1796) is not yet translated, though we do
have translations of two significant and popular novels which
were greatly influenced by it: E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Die Elixiere
des Teufels (1815) and Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris
(1831). Only after 1990 has the Gothic become a recognizable
genre and acquired some popularity in Bulgaria, though that has
been more due to the liberalized import of Gothic and Horror
films (usually film adaptations from literature) than to new literary translations. The first Bulgarian translation of Bram Stoker’s
novel Dracula (1897), for instance, was issued simultaneously
with the release of F. F. Coppola’s film adaptation in Bulgaria in
1993. That was also a shortened and adapted version.
Bulgarian Gothic criticism and academic research has been
unable to surmount the established persistence of lacks and
299
blanks (not constitutive, alas) in the area. One of the biggest
challenges that I have to deal with even now is the lack of specifically Bulgarian studies of the Gothic novel. In fact, I had at
my disposal only four Bulgarian sources for my research: Dmitri
Ivanov’s preface in the first edition of Frankenstein (1981);
Georgi Tzankov’s preface in the Gothic Novels volume (1984);
and chapters in Marco Mincoff’s A History of English Literature: Part II (1976) and Simeon Hadzhikosev’s West European
Literature: Part II (2006). As it happens the latter are the most
dismissive critical appraisals of the Gothic that I have come
across. According to Mincoff, “even the best representatives of
the school” have no value of their own and only suggest “the
background against which the romantics proper should be read,
and the soil out of which they sprang” (Mincoff 1976: 179). In
fact, Mincoff labels Gothic literature as “reactionary romanticism,” though more on an aesthetic than on a philosophical or
political basis:
The movement was essentially reactionary, and if the term
“reactionary romanticism” is used at all in connection with
English literature, it is here that it can best be applied; but it
is reactionary through its sensationalism and divorce from
life rather than through any philosophy it may seem to suggest. (180)
By referring to this negative evaluation I do not intend to question a distinguished scholar’s authority. I just want to put to discussion the assumptions underlying such negations and to shed
light on such critical judgments, which are responsible for the
academic disregard of the Gothic in Bulgaria.
Paradoxically, this lack of predecessors supplied me with
critical encouragement along the lines of “authority to be overcome,” “secret to be revealed,” or “prohibition to be removed,”
all the more so since Gothic societies and writings are often
wrapped in an aura of the “mysterious,” “mystical,” “impenetrable” etc. As I progressed with my research though, I gradually
realized that the absence of information and critical readings is
actually the lesser problem. A considerably more serious obstacle was posed by the difference of cultural codes and contexts
that have formed the Gothic tradition. From this followed the
most serious lack – that of an appropriately cultivated Bulgarian
300
discourse by means of which the foreign tradition’s lineage,
nodes and branches could be translated and grafted into our cultural milieu. Consequently, the systematization of basic thematic
fields, aesthetic categories and conceptual frames in contemporary Gothic studies, as well as of the modes of their interpretation, conferred an introductory function to my research. Besides
establishing standards, my research also introduces or poses new
questions for future Gothic studies in Bulgaria. A discussion of
some of these follows.
The reception of the Gothic in Bulgaria, however unconsidered and unsystematic, has left quite distinct traces in Bulgarian
literature which are yet to be systematically discussed and analyzed. I have four phenomena in mind, two of which I have analyzed in detail elsewhere (Kovachev 2008). These connections
to the Gothic are far from commonly accepted, and are usually
treated with suspicion and doubt by readers and scholars. The
phenomena in question relate to: Ivan Vazov’s lyric-epic cycle
Epopee to the Forgotten (1881-1884); Bulgarian symbolist poetry; and historical novels by Emilian Stanev and Anton
Donchev. Far be it from me to redefine their generic categories;
here I simply attempt a clearer delineation of the Gothic figure
in their carpets, to evoke Henry James’s metaphor. In Vazov’s
odes, for example, this Gothic figure is suggested by the characterization of a monk who renounces his vow (in the poem
“Levski”), and by that of another one who writes in his cell by
the light of a flickering taper (in “Paisii”). The Gothic figure
also appears in descriptions of hero-rebels who are exceptional,
demonic, solitary and/or wrapped up in mystery (in “Levski,”
“Rakovski,” “Benkovski,” “Kableshkov” etc.). Further, Gothic
resonances are available in scenes of violence, desecration and
death in the Perushtitza church (in “Kocho”), and in the elements of graveyard poetry and the supernatural sublime union of
dead and alive in the final poem.
Bulgarian symbolist poetry, though completely different
from Vazov’s, contains a surprisingly large number of Gothic
motifs and figures. They are most evident in Dimcho Debelyanov’s longer poem “Legend of the Abandoned Princess”
(1914), Hristo Yasenov’s lyrical volume A Knight’s Castle
(1921) and Teodor Trayanov’s cycles Regina Mortua (1909) and
301
Pantheon (1934). When the reader’s imagination and the
scholar’s eye begin to discern the presence of abundant Gothic
symbols, their remoteness from Bulgarian cultural and literary
traditions actuate two kinds of temporal correlations. The more
popular and naïve identifications associate certain icons, such as
knights, castles, towers, vaults, crypts, dungeons and cathedrals,
with clichéd images of the Western medieval past. This seems
quite reasonable, but it is worth asking by what process have the
Western medieval and gothic paradigms come to be united and
constructed in the Bulgarian lyric system? This cannot be explained away as resulting from some improbable intercultural
communication rooted in the “dark” Middle Ages, when contacts between the Bulgarian and the Occidental were overtly
hostile and only tacitly sympathetic. The more discerning identifications associate these icons with the pre-romantic genres of
the Gothic novel, Gothic drama and graveyard poetry, and understand them as derived from the latter by narrative remodelling and symbolic sublimation. The cultural asymmetry of the
relationship in “Gothic–Symbolism” enables a triadic frame to
be outlined between body, architecture and nature. Within this
frame the isomorphic signs and features of the uncanny Gothic
and of native Symbolist discourses are distributed. By means of
Dobrin Dobrev’s A Handbook of Symbols in Bulgarian Symbolism (1996) I have identified the following associations:
“
” (ghost) with functional synonyms “
” (wandering spirit), “
” (vampire), “
” (demon),
“
” (monster); “
” (captive), “
”
(locked in) and “
” (slave); “
” (castle), “
” (palace) and “
” (towers); “
”/”
” (jail/dungeon),
“
”/”
” (throne/royal chair), “
” (dilapidated pillars); “
” (abyss) and its functional synonyms
“
” (precipice), “
” (pit) and “
” (swamp), as
well as “
” (grave), “
” (sepulchre) and “
”
(graveyard). The question that arises in contemplating these is:
do such associations appear in Bulgarian symbolist poems due to
consciously created intertextual links or are they unconsciously
assimilated as a set of striking and impressive ornaments, borrowed from the European poetic patterns? It seems likely to me
that the unexpected kinship between the gothic and the symbol302
ist in Bulgarian poetry derives from a trace left by the frantic
(even in its fictional “infirmity”) search and reconstruction of
alterity, parallel worlds and doubled identities, which are so
deeply embedded in Gothic literature.
At the heart of the final such phenomenon to be discussed lie
conceptual homologies between Gothic and nationalist discourse. This can be exemplified with reference to a loose trilogy
of Emilian Stanev’s novels, entitled Legend of Sibin – The
Prince of Preslav (1968), Tikhick and Nazareus (1977), and Antichrist (1970), and Anton Donchev’s novel Time for Parting
(1964). I focus on three common denominators of complex, unstable or even disruptive national, aesthetic or personal identity,
which play a crucial role in the interplay between narrative discourse and historical representation. These are: the symbolic
bond of blood and soil, nourishing the mythology of vampire
and nationalist narratives alike; the literary mystification technique; and the figurations of narrative doubles. The abovementioned stories are embedded within local “grand narratives”
of medieval ethnic and religious discords, and the five centuries
of Ottoman occupation that followed. In all four novels, values
which characterise the ideology of both romance narratives and
nationalist imaginings are pitted against the authority of the oppressive Other. These values include love of freedom and the
native land, love for the family and the past, ethnic and religious
tolerance, and self-sacrifice. As I have explained elsewhere,
eighteenth century “Gothick” poetics established such virtues as
indispensable to the romance narrative (Kovachev 2004); and in
the nineteenth century East and South European national revivals inscribed these values in the rhetoric of nation building. Such
transfer from literary into political plots, however speculative or
transgressive it may seem, falls within the complex interplay of
aesthetics and ideology, and was central to the formation of a
bourgeois nationalist discourse. Therefore both the “Gothick”
and the national revivals have left an ambivalent historical legacy for contemporary Balkan and specifically Bulgarian identity
discourses.
Last but not least, I have some observations arising from my
research on the translation and translatability of basic terms, aesthetic notions and concepts from Gothic discourse, rather than of
303
Gothic works themselves. To begin with, there’s the verb
“
” (gothicize), which sounds rather eccentric in
Bulgarian and probably grates on the ears of native English
speakers too. This neologism is inevitable (as well as the reluctance it initially arouses) and cannot be replaced with the more
natural sounding “
,” because it designates just the
opposite action. The latter, analogically to verbs like
“
” (vandalize), “
” (Europeanize)
etc., denotes a metonymic transfer of the doer’s properties to the
deed, which leaves only external traces of impact on the object.
The notion of “
” (Gothicizing) denotes a process,
which is much closer to the production of a metaphor. Similar to
“
” (electrification) or “
”
(mystification), it inscribes, immures, infiltrates inside the object
properties and faculties that are not typical of it and substantially
modifies, replaces or “recovers” its identity.
Then there’s the English literary term romance, which has
almost no equivalent in Bulgarian literary studies. Bulgarian
Medieval literature lacks works that can be defined as belonging
to that genre, while literary discourse during the National Revival (1762-1878) appropriates only the term “
,” corresponding to novel, most probably through the mediation of Russian and French. On the other side of Europe, such major British
‘Gothick’ Revival authors as Horace Walpole and Clara Reeve
made romance an object of theoretical discussion in the last decades of the eighteenth century. This contributed significantly to
the development of Gothic narrative and aesthetics in general, as
well as to the formation of the forthcoming Romantic ideology.
However, the distinction between romance and novel in eighteenth century Britain has had no resonance either then or thereafter in Bulgaria. Yet, the lack of a name does not necessarily
mean the lack of a referent. When I apply the notion of romance
to nineteenth century Bulgarian contexts I attempt to stretch a
very incoherent “Pan-European” generic continuity and simultaneously underline a clear-cut cultural discontinuity. In this intercultural juxtaposition the transfer of a term acquires the characteristics of a transference, which invests the term itself with new
connotations. Therefore, romance in my use challenges certain
limits of both a generic and a national tradition of naming in a
304
tropological mode. This act of signification not only introduces a
name but also invents a tradition (in the terms of Eric Hobsbawm 1983); it articulates something whose absence becomes
tangible thanks to the supplementation of another tradition.
Dealing with this kind of Freudian sense of Das Unheimliche is enjoined on Bulgarian translators and indeed translators
in general. Indicative of the degree of misunderstanding that
could be at stake here is the fact that the one and only Bulgarian
translation (from 1991) of Freud’s essay on Das Unheimliche
(1919) published up to now skips the whole linguistic excursus
on which Freud grounds the introduction of his term. Another
curious case is the use of its habitual English translation uncanny to translate the French l’etrange in Tzvetan Todorov’s
study of the Fantastic genre (1970). Thus Todorov’s critical discourse is, perhaps unintentionally, drawn closer to Freudian psychoanalysis. It is noteworthy that the Viennese doctor illustrated
this theory by an analysis of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s story The
Sandman (1816), and not by a case study. As a matter of fact,
Todorov’s and Freud’s theories have three essential components
in common: the intellectual uncertainty, which causes the feeling of the uncanny/l’etrange; the motif of the double, having
turned from a guarantee of immortality into a dreadful harbinger
of death; and the animation of inanimate matter and vice versa,
displayed by the transformation of a human being into an
automaton. Therefore, among all existing Bulgarian translations
of the term “uncanny” I prefer “
” for the time
being.
Finally we have the Gothic “dessert” – the issue of clear
definitions of and discrimination between the notions of horror
and terror. Ann Radcliffe attempted to do this in her dialogue
“On the Supernatural in Poetry”, published posthumously in
1826. The “Great enchantress”, as her contemporaries called her,
insisted that horror is characterized by “uncertainty and obscurity” by means of which it “contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates” the faculty of man to experience the sublime. While terror
is so far opposite that it “expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life” (Radcliffe 1826: 150). Since the
Bulgarian-English, English-Bulgarian and Bulgarian dictionaries
make no semantic difference between them, I decided that жа
305
for terror and
а for horror are appropriate translations.
This demarcation is not universally accepted in Gothic studies;
all the more so since Radcliffe herself had not adhered to it in
her novel writing. More valuable to me were her observations
about the relation between her conceptualization of horror/terror and Edmund Burke’s theory of the sublime. Thus,
with her post-Kantian treatment of the sublime she consolidated
the bond between two key notions in Gothic aesthetics and poetics. Thanks to Radcliffe, and to Foucault’s approach to discourse
too, I feel that the connection between the genre and terror can
be succinctly put as follows: Gothic is a cultural frame of the
(pre)Modern Age, which intensifies considerably the process of
putting terror into discourse.
In conclusion, let me reiterate that owing to cultural differences and unsystematic and unconsidered reception in Bulgaria
the Gothic has been subject to aesthetic and evaluative prejudices. Moreover, responses to the Gothic in Bulgarian literature,
appearing as it does from a different canonical content and order, and the (im)possible intertextual relations that the Gothic
has with Bulgarian literature, have been largely disregarded. My
research and study of the Gothic have consequently sought to
reverse prevailing attitudes, in a way which has been experienced by scholars of popular culture or postcolonial literature.
Works Cited
Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our
Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. London: R. Dodsley,
1757.
Dobrev, Dobrin. Spravochnik na simvolite v bulgarskiya simvolizum. [A Handbook of Symbols in Bulgarian Symbolism]
Shumen: Glaucus. 1996.
Donchev, Anton. Vreme razdelno. [Time for Parting] Sofia:
Bulgarski pisatel, 1964. (English Transl. Marguerite
Alexieva. William Morrow & Co. 1967).
Foucault, Michel, “The Order of Discourse.” Robert Young ed.
Untying the Text: A Poststructuralist Reader. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. 51-78.
306
Focault, M. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” Paul Rabinow ed.
The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.
76-100.
Freud, Sigmund. Uzhasnoto. [“The Uncanny.”] Estetika.
Izkoustvo. Literatura. [Aesthetics. Art. Literature.] Transl.
Haritina Kostova-Dobreva. Sofia: St. Kliment Ohridski University Press, 1991, 501-523.
Goticheski roman. [Gothic Novels] Sofia: Narodna kultura,
1984.
Hadzhikosev, Simeon. Zapandoevropeiska literatura. [WestEuropean Literature: Part II.] Sofia: CIELA, 2006.
Hobsbawm, Eric. “Introduction: Inventing Traditions.” Eric
Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger eds. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983.
Ivanov, Dmitri. Strahut na malkata Meri [“Little Mary’s Fear.”]
Preface to Mary Shelley. Frankenstein. Sofia: Narodna Kultura, 1981.
Kovachev, Ognyan. “Balkan Gothic: ‘Horrible dictu’ or ‘Horror
vacui’?” Études Balkaniques, 2 (2008):149-165.
Kovachev, Ognyan. Goticheskiyat roman. Genealogiya, zhanr i
estetika. [The Gothic Novel: Genealogy, Genre, Aesthetics.]
Sofia: Ednorog, 2004.
Mincoff, Marco. A History of English Literature: Part II. Sofia:
Naouka i Izkoustvo, 1976.
Radcliffe, Ann. “On the Supernatural in Poetry.” The New
Monthly Magazine, 16: 1 (1826): 145-152.
Stanev, Emilian. Antihrist. [Antichrist]. Sofia: Balgarski pisatel,
1970.
Stanev, Emilian. Legenda za Sibin, preslavskiya knyaz [Legend
of Sibin, the Prince of Preslav]. Sofia: Narodna mladezh,
1968.
Stanev, Emilian. “Tihik i Nazarii” [Tikhick and Nazareus]. Izbrani suchineniya v tri toma. [Selected Works in 3 Volumes]
Vol. III. Sofia: Balgarski pisatel, 1977.
307
Todorov, Tzvetan. Introduction à la littérature fantastique.
Paris: Seuil, 1970 (Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic. A
Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Transl. Richard
Howard, Cleveland, 1973).
Tzankov, Georgi. “Sledi ot kopitata na dyavola” [Traces from
the Devil’s Hoofs] Goticheski romani. [Gothic Novels.]
Sofia: Narodna kultura, 1984.
Vazov, Ivan. “Epopeya na zabravenite” [Epopee to the Forgotten] Subrani suchineniya. [Collected works] Vol. 2. Sofia:
Bulgarski Pisatel, 1975.
308
22
British Literature in the Context of Stage
and Screen Arts Higher Education
Iskra Nikolova
Introduction: “The Small Read”
At the beginning of October 2008 “The Big Read” show started
in Bulgaria with the goal of identifying Bulgarian readers’ favourite book from world literature through viewer voting. In this
connection, I would like to begin my paper with a brief description of a survey which I conducted with students attending my
lecture course in Western European literature in the spring term
of the academic year 2007-2008 at the National Academy of
Theatre and Film Arts (NATFA), Sofia, Bulgaria. These were
first year students in Acting, Directing, Scriptwriting and Film
Studies. In contrast to “The Big Read” I shall call this survey
“The Small Read 07” (chronologically it actually preceded the
Bulgarian “Big Read”).
In the early spring of 2007 I concluded one of my lectures
by inviting the students to vote for their favourite Western European author. For a period of one week students could cast their
ballot-notes in an improvised voting-urn. They could identify
more than one writer and/or book. There were no strict genre
restrictions, but possibly because there was also a question about
their favourite literary character most of the students chose novels or short stories; others voted for plays.
I got 36 responses to the survey. This number may not be
statistically significant on a large scale, but it could be considered as quite representative for a relatively small higher school
such as NATFA. Roughly, this number corresponds to about
one-third of all first year students at the Academy.
The voting results can be summarized as follows:
309
(Some of the students have written only the name(s) of the
author(s), others have noted particular titles. In the chart below
the titles, where present, are given in parentheses.)
1. Ranking first, with
38.8% of the vote:
2. Each of the following authors got about
10% of the vote:
3. Each of the following authors got about
7% of the vote:
Miguel de Cervantes
(Don Quixote)
Honore de Balzac
Harold Pinter
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables, Notre-Dame
de Paris)
Hans Christian
Andersen
Charlotte Brontë
(Jane Eyre)
Erich Kästner
Other Western-European authors noted in the vote:
Charles Baudelaire, Franz Kafka (The Castle, The Trial, Metamorphosis), Rainer Maria Rilke, Federico García Lorca, Albert Camus (The
Myth of Sisyphus), Jean-Paul Sartre, Erich Maria Remarque, Boris
Vian (Foam of the Daze), Heiner Müller, Max Frisch (Homo Faber,
Don Juan or the Love of Geometry), Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg,
Giovanni Verga, Selma Lagerlöf, Astrid Lindgren, Alexandre Dumas
(The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers).
Other British authors noted in the vote:
Charles Dickens, Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights), Virginia Woolf,
John Fowles, Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting).
Also: Alexander Milne with Winnie-the-Pooh, J. R. R. Tolkien with
The Lord of the Rings, James Matthew Barrie with Peter Pan, Douglas
Adams with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Terry Pratchett with
the Discworld novels, J. K. Rowling with the Harry Potter novels.
Oscar Wilde
(The Picture of
Dorian Gray, “The
Happy Prince,” “The
Fisherman and His
Soul;” “The Soul of
Man under Socialism”)
William Shakespeare
Samuel Beckett
Hermann Hesse
(Siddhartha)
Antoine de SaintExupéry
(The Little Prince)
In general, I can say that I was pleasantly surprised by the
diversity of the students’ responses. What seemed somewhat
unexpected to me was the strong preference for Oscar Wilde,
who was ranked not only high above traditionally well-loved
authors like, say, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Strindberg, Lorca,
310
Beckett, Pinter, but also above contemporary favourites like
Welsh, Tolkien, etc.
Doubtlessly, the results of the “Small Read 07” survey show
the strong position of British literature as a whole (there were
five British authors out of twelve at the top three positions, and
many more were noted in the vote). There is, however, some
imbalance with regard to authors and periods. For instance, the
great English novelists of the 18th and the 19th century seem to
be somewhat underrepresented (the only ones noted are Dickens
and the Brontë sisters), even in comparison to other Western
European authors of the same period. Consequently, in subsequent sessions I devoted some time and effort to drawing the
students’ attention to the works of Swift, Fielding, Sterne,
Thackeray. On the other hand, British literature achieved outstanding results for children's classics and contemporary authors
and genres. This, I think, gestures toward the need to respond to
student interests by allotting some time to authors who are usually inadequately represented or not included in the academic
syllabus, such as Milne, Tolkien, Rowling, Douglas Adams, etc.
Of course, the “Small Read 07” survey just gives a rough
and momentary snapshot of students’ preferences, which may
have been influenced by a number of subjective and objective
factors. It is likely that the survey would reveal different results
if conducted with the same respondents today. It should also be
noted that the survey was conducted at the beginning of the
course, because I wanted to get an overall picture of the literary
background and interests of the audience. It provided me with
useful feedback and was fun for the students at the same time; so
I am planning to conduct a “Small Read” survey on a regular
basis, in each new lecture course. I will also attempt to develop a
two-stage format, both at the “entry” and the “exit” level, to investigate the dynamics of the responses.
Literature in Relation to Stage and Screen Arts Education
In this part of my paper I would like to focus on some methodological and conceptual aspects of teaching literature to students
in stage and screen arts and studies. Some of the main goals of
literature classes in this environment are to support and stimulate
specific creative activities among and to develop the profes311
sional skills of the students, as well as to broaden their general
cultural horizons.
In his seminal book The Post-Dramatic Theatre, the German
researcher Hans-Thies Lehmann describes the so-called “project
theatre” as one of the innovative forms of contemporary dramatic art (Lehmann 2001: 203-204). The project principle is
widely implemented, in various forms, also in the sphere of
screen arts, where each screenplay or script could be regarded as
a basis for a project. As a key element of the structural organization of contemporary stage and screen arts, the project principle
requires persistent work and the ability to notice and assess the
dramaturgical potential of literary materials. Such “materials”1
have always been in demand, but now more than ever, in a
world of postmodern intertextuality and ever-growing competition, theatre and cinema seem to be in constant search of interesting and adaptable (fictional, documentary, visual) sources.
Moreover, in the flexible and dynamic network of the creative
and cultural institutions nowadays, the function of “sourcehunters” is performed not only by playwrights and screenwriters,
dramaturges, theatre and film directors, producers and managers.
Today, to a much greater degree, a theatre or film project could
be initiated by an actor or a group of actors; by a scenographer,
choreographer, composer, etc.
In this context literature presents an inexhaustible resource, a
fertile ground for exploration and discoveries. Therefore, the
development of the theatre and film students’ literary competences has a direct practical bearing on their creative, critical and
research activities and intentions. Literary studies at NATFA
aim to provide students with skills for exploring and developing
the dramaturgical (stage and/or screen) potential of a literary
text. Considerations along similar lines are very likely to have
influenced, for example, the “Small Read” survey results discussed above.
This practical “hands-on” approach to literature encouraged
me to undertake research into the various forms and techniques
of theatre and film adaptation. Some theoretical and practical
aspects of the adaptation process are presented in my book
“Texts in Motion: Problems of Translation and Adaptation”
(2005). It explores interdisciplinary issues of theatre translation,
312
stage and screen adaptation and is intended to be of use to practicing professionals and to students in stage and screen arts and
studies, as a learning resource and reference guide.
I shall not dwell here on the arguments for and against adaptation, and on the problems of fidelity and equivalence which
have long been the subject of much debate and controversy in
both translation and adaptation studies. I would just like to refer
to the essay “Adaptation, or Cinema as Digest,” which was written by the prominent French film critic and theorist André Bazin
in 1948, and which anticipated in many ways some key developments in the field of adaptation. (The essay focuses mainly on
screen adaptation but is also relevant to other media such as
theatre, radio, etc.). The introductory part of this essay offers the
following remark:
More than one writer, more than one critic, more than one
filmmaker even, has challenged the aesthetic justification for
adaptation of novels on the screen; however, there are few
examples of those who take actual exception to this practice,
of artists who refuse to sell their books, to adopt other people’s books, or to direct them when a producer comes along
with the right blandishments. So their theoretical argument
doesn’t seem altogether justified. (Bazin 1996: 41)
So, more than half a century ago Bazin pointed out that the adaptation “of original works of art has become so customary and
so frequent that it is next to impossible to question their existence today” (49). His observations, written in the middle of the
20th century, hold true even more today, in the postmodern era
and at the beginning of the new millennium. A cursory glance at
cinema posters, theatre bills and TV programmes in any part of
the world would be enough to prove the validity of his conclusions. Not only in practical but also in theoretical terms Bazin’s
insightful prediction that “we are moving toward a reign of adaptation in which the notion of the unity of the work of art, if not
the very notion of the author himself, will be destroyed” (49) has
come true to a considerable extent. It has been confirmed by the
subsequent “death of the author” polemics and by the rich diversity of postmodern intertextual practices.
Broadly speaking, adaptation involves interchange between
different sign systems, arts, genres, media and cultures. It spans
313
a vast and varied territory bordering on translation, on the one
hand, and on the intertextual and intercultural collage, on the
other hand. It is often a collaborative process, in which the transition from page to stage or screen requires not only conceptual,
semiotic and intermedial transformations but also adaptation to
specific target audiences, horizons of expectation and modes of
reception.
These various aspects of the adaptation process have been
integrated into a project assignment which aims to motivate students at NATFA to develop and present their ideas for a screen
or stage adaptation of a literary work of their own choice. To a
certain extent, the assignment is designed as a simulation of and
preparation for the so-called “pitching” sessions for early-stage
startups. The requirements, format, deadlines, and assessment
criteria are specified in detail in the guidelines for the assignment.
So far I have emphasized some special skills which literary
studies seek to foster in the context of stage and screen arts
higher education. Of equal importance also is the enhancement
of more general, “transferable” skills and abilities such as literary competence, interpretive, analytical and critical abilities,
creativity, communication and presentation skills (for instance,
through the creation and presentation of the students’ project
assignments). And, finally, the overall objective of literary lectures, seminars and tutorials is to stimulate students to experience and share the delights of reading, and to encourage their
intellectual, aesthetic and emotional involvement with books.
Literature and the Performing Arts
In the above-mentioned essay, André Bazin investigates both the
aesthetic and pedagogical functions of adaptation. In a similar
vein, I focus briefly in this final part of my paper on some performance practices and their relationship to the aesthetics and
pedagogy of adaptation.
There are many examples of creative interaction between literature, theatre and cinema. Numberless stage and screen adaptations (successful and otherwise) of major literary works have
attracted theoretical and critical attention. Not so widely researched, however, are some experimental performance prac314
tices at the intersection of theatre and literature. They may
evolve both on the professional and the amateur stage, and may
pursue not only aesthetic but sometimes also pedagogical purposes.
One interesting and useful study of this experimental field
belongs to the American theatre educators and researchers
Ronald E. Shields and Allen N. Kepke (1996). In their study
Shields and Kepke provide a brief historical overview of literature-inspired projects and performances in the North-American
cultural and educational scene:
Beginning with the conceptual and performance features of
the Speech Choir as introduced in America during the 1930s
by Marjorie Gullan, a pioneer in choral speaking, and extending to Readers’ Theatre, as introduced by Leslie Irene
Coger, and Chamber Theatre, as promoted by Robert Breen,
the activity of voicing and staging literature has occupied the
talents and time of directors, adaptors, teachers, and students
for more than half a century. (Shields and Kepke 1996: 71)
Then they proceed to explore some “site-specific, environmental
stagings” of “multiple literary texts in group performance,”
which they designate as “Gallery Theatre” in contrast to “Readers’ Theatre.” One such “multiple text” is entitled “Poets and
Paintings” (dir. B. W. Long); it explores the relationship between Pre-Raphaelite poetry and visual art, with performers “offering the poetry as explanation, interpretation, or verbalized
guide posts for the projected images” (77).
Other contemporary theatre formations and institutions also
show particular interest in the interaction of theatre and literature. In many countries "Reading Festivals" are held on a regular
basis, presenting theatralized readings or oral interpretations
(group or individual) of literary works. Fringe theatre companies
in North America such as “Book-It” (Seattle) and “Word for
Word” (San Francisco) – both formed in the 1990s – have experimented in theatrical narrative storytelling. Sometimes their
performances are exactly at the opposite pole of adaptation; as
theatre critic Kerry Reid points out, they strive to “bring classic
and contemporary works of literature to the stage without cutting
or changing a word of the author's text”(Reid 1997). In Bulgaria
the “Sfumato” Theatre-Laboratory (founded in 1989) has been
315
involved in a number of successful literary performance projects.
Not only professional companies but also student amateur
theatres are eager to explore the “contact zone” between literature and the performing arts. Furthermore, Readers’ Theatre and
group performance techniques are adopted by non-theatre disciplines to serve pedagogical purposes, both at school and University level. The use of performance techniques in a literary workshop is described, for instance, by John Glavin (2003) in the
Georgetown University Bulletin. The workshop conducted by
Glavin presents “an attempt to teach Dickens through a combination of adaptation and performance.” Two of Dickens’s novels
– Little Dorrit and Our Mutual Friend were staged during the
workshop. According to Glavin, the project has been inspired by
the Poor Theatre of Jerzy Grotowski:
For our performances we relied on the theory and practice of
the Polish theatrical genius, Jerzy Grotowski, as they were
developed during the 1960s by his own Laboratory Theatre,
and codified in his 1968 collection of essays, “Towards a
Poor Theatre”. Poor Theatre served us in three ways. It was
cheap. It was founded on adaptation. And it contained its own
acting technique, so that rehearsal became identical with the
education of the performer. That last feature was enormously
important in running a classroom-workshop. (Glavin 2003)
Glavin’s experimental workshop demonstrates that interactive, performative and proactive methods may be applied effectively in a wider academic and socio-cultural context, not necessarily related to students in stage and screen arts. Of course, such
methods are not meant to replace the traditional modes of teaching, but at some appropriate point they can be used to promote a
more proactive and experiential study of literature.
More specifically here, the intercultural exchange between
performing arts and literature may be examined with regard to
the interaction between British literature and Bulgarian theatre.
As far as I know there have been no comprehensive studies on
the ways in which Bulgarian theatre has adopted and adapted
works from British literature. I shall briefly touch upon this interesting topic here, mainly on the basis of the information I
have from various professional and public sources.
316
This information corroborates to a certain extent the results
from the “Small Read” survey and sheds light on the formative
impact of existing adaptations on some of the students’ preferences. For instance, there have been many stage adaptations of
the works of Oscar Wilde – it seems that Bulgarian theatremakers find his prose to be as appealing as his plays. “The
Happy Prince,” “The Fisherman and His Soul,” “The Nightingale and the Rose,” “The Canterville Ghost” have been frequently adapted over the years, for the theatre and/or puppetry
stage. A major Oscar Wilde adaptation was The Picture of
Dorian Gray, adapted for the stage (under the title “Decent
Murders”) by playwright and screenplay writer Yurii Dachev,
directed by Bina Haralampieva at The Theatre off the Channel
(2004). The adaptation won the playwright award of the Bulgarian Theatre-makers’ Union (UBA) in 2005.
Scene from “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, (“Decent Murders”),
Theatre off the Channel, Sofia, 2004
Another theatre production which received critical acclaim was
“The Fisherman and his Soul,” adapted for the stage and directed
by the well-known Bulgarian actor and director Marius Kurkinski.
The production was selected for the influential “Varna Summer”
international theatre festival in 2005. For the part of the Witch the
young actress Radena Valkanova was nominated for the UBA’s
2005 award for best supporting actress.
317
Scene from “The Fisherman and His Soul,”
Theatre 199, Sofia, 2004
There are also a number of British authors who are often
adapted for the speech and/or acting public exams at NATFA
and other theatre schools. They range from Chaucer (some of his
Canterbury Tales) to classic and modern writers such as Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre), the Romantic poets (Byron, Keats,
Shelley), Alan Sillitoe (The Loneliness of the Long Distance
Runner), John Fowles (The Collector), etc.
A subgroup of theatre productions based on literary sources
consists of adaptations that were first made and produced abroad
in English and then translated and staged in Bulgaria. Such is the
case, for example, with the dramatized version of Keith Waterhouse’s novel Billy Liar which I translated into Bulgarian some
time ago and which has been produced several times by metropolitan and regional theatre companies. The Bulgarian production of Lionel Bart’s musical “Oliver!” (based on Dickens’s
Oliver Twist), which has been running at the Youth Theatre in
Sofia since 2007, deserves special mention too.
318
Scene from “Oliver!” Youth Theatre, Sofia, 2007
The interest in British children’s literature manifested in the
“The Small Read 07” survey seems to be the expression of another general trend in the relationship between British literature
and Bulgarian theatre. Over the years there have been innumerable theatre and puppet theatre adaptations of A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh. Other “ever-greens” include Swift’s Gulliver’s
Travels, Lewis Carroll’s Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,
Kipling’s Just So Stories and The Jungle Book, J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, P. L. Travers’s Mary Poppins, Donald Bisset’s stories.
Scene from “The Elephant's Child”(after Rudyard Kipling),
running since 2003 at the Central Puppet Theatre, Sofia
319
Even from this brief overview it is evident that the exchange
between British literature and Bulgarian theatre has been fairly
lively and fruitful. In an intercultural world, particularly in
Europe, the great literary works will undoubtedly continue to be
a source of enrichment and inspiration.
Conclusion
In my presentation I have looked at literary studies in the context
of stage and screen arts higher education, and have outlined
some specific modes of interaction between literature and performing arts. Other relevant lines of research might involve, for
example, the ways in which literature, in its turn, influences contemporary dramaturgical practices; also the impact of cinema on
literature and theatre texts. But these are topics which deserve
separate study and consideration.
Notes
1
The term “material” in regard to literary works was adopted and
notably used by Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) whose renderings or rewritings (the German term is “Umarbeitungen”) of literary texts (both
dramaturgical and belletristic) for the stage were an essential element
of the aesthetics of his “epic theatre.”
Works Cited
Bazin, André. “Adaptation, or Cinema as Digest.” Bazin at
Work: Major Essays and Reviews from the Forties and Fifties. Ed. Bert Carullo. Trans. Alain Piette and Bert Cardullo.
New York: Routledge, 1996. 41-51.
Glavin, John. “Inexpensive Theatrical Production.” Georgetown
University Bulletin, Washington D. C., 2008.
Lehmann, Hans-Thies. Postdramatisches Theater. Frankfurt a.
M.: Verlag der Autoren, 2001.
Reid, Kerry. “A Dark Adapted Eye.” SF Metropolitan, February
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Shields, Ronald E. and Allen N. Kepke. “Prolegomenon to Gallery Theatre: Staging/Performing Fusing, Shifting, and Contrasting Horizons.” Theatre Topics 6:1 (1996): 71-90.
320
Index
Abrams, M. H., 283, 294
Adams, Douglas, 310-311
Afros, Elena, 110, 118
Alecsandri, Vasile, 62
Amaral, Alberto, 228, 229
Andersen, Hans Christian,
310
Anderson, Benedict, 69, 72
Anikst, Alexandr A., 81-82,
84, 92, 101-102
Arnold, Matthew, 25, 53
Auerbach, 26, 75-76, 80-81,
93
Austen, Jane, 53
Azar, Betty, 160, 163
Bălcescu, Nicolae, 62, 64
Baldick, Chris, 25, 41
Balzac, Honore de, 310
Bantaş, Andrei, 70, 72-74
Baron, Scarlett, 114, 118
Barrie, James Matthew, 310,
319
Barry, Peter, 57-58
Bart, Lionel, 318
Barthes, Roland, 172, 177,
181, 191, 286, 294
Baudelaire, Charles, 310
Baxter, Judith, 116, 119
Bazerman, Charles, 109-110,
119
Bazin, André, 313-314, 320
Beaumarchais, Pierre, 273
Becher, Tony, 109, 111, 119
Beckett, Samuel, 310-311
Beckford, William, 299
Behn, Aphra, 51-52, 59
Bennett, Andrew, 57-58,
288, 294
Benveniste, Émile, 140
Berkenkotter, Carol, 111, 119
Berns, Margie, 130, 134
Beza, Marcu, 68
Bhabha, Homi K., 175, 177
Birrell, T.A., 29-30, 41
Bisset, Donald, 319
Blake, William, 53, 289-290,
292, 294-295
Bloom, Harold, 48, 58, 183,
191, 283, 294
Bodea, Cornelia, 66, 72
Bojadzhiev, Zhivko, 139, 154
Bolintineanu, Dimitrie, 62
Bolliac, Cezar, 62, 64
Borras, Frank, 241
Botev, Khristo, 276, 291
Botez, Ion, 68
Botticelli, Sandro, 51
Bowles, William, 290
Bracewell, Wendy, 90, 92-93
Brontë, Charlotte, 53, 310311, 318
Brontë, Emily, 53, 310-311
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett,
53
Browning, Robert, 53
Brunetiere, Ferdinand, 276
Bunyan, John, 11, 53
Burbank, John, 67, 69
Burke, Jim, 205-206
Burke, Edmund, 306
Burns, Robert, 53, 272
Butler, Marilyn, 293-294
321
Butler, Samuel, 70, 72
Byron, George Gordon, 9,
53, 63, 72, 82, 85, 89, 9293, 285-287, 289-296, 318
Calhoun, Craig, 222, 229
Călinescu, George, 62-63, 68,
72
Camus, Albert, 108, 310
Carlyle, Thomas, 25
Carroll, Lewis, 319
Cartianu, Ana, 68
Carver, Terrel, 286, 294
Cazamian, Louis, 70, 75, 82
Ceauşescu, Nicolae, 252
Cercel, Petru, 66
Cervantes, Miguel de, 178,
310
Charles, Maggie, 109, 119
Charlton, H. B., 82, 84
Chateaubriand, 63
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 12, 49,
53, 70, 72, 255, 318
Chen Shubo, 176, 178
Cherrington, Ruth, 176-177
Chesterton, Thomas, 272
Chiţoran, Dimitru, 70
Chopin, Kate, 53
Clare, John, 53
Clark, Katerina, 91-92
Clausen, Wendell, 27-28, 41
Coffin, Caroline, 109, 119
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor,
12, 25, 53, 285, 287, 289290, 292
Collins, Wilkie, 53
Conan Doyle, Arthur, 53
Conrad, Joseph, 53
Cook, Albert, 26
322
Coppola, Francis Ford, 168,
175, 299
Cornea, Paul, 62, 72
Crampton, Richard, 251
Crawford, Robert, 25, 42
Crystal, David, 140
Cunningham, Valentine, 189,
191
Dahinden, Janine, 88, 92
Damrosch, David, 76, 93
Damyanova, Rumyana, 276,
280
Danchev, Andrey, 139, 235
Davenant, William, 50
Davidson, Cathy N., 205-206
Davis, Hayley, 147, 154
Debelyanov, Dimcho, 301
Defoe, Daniel, 11, 53, 57,
272, 277, 279
Descartes, René, 61
Dewey, John, 146, 154
Dickens, Charles, 7, 53, 57,
310-311, 316, 318
Diderot, Denis, 273
Dilthey, Wilhelm, 83
Dimitrov, Georgi, 252
Dimov, Georgi, 275, 280-281
Dirven, Rene, 150, 154
Dixon, John, 25, 42
Dobrev, Dobrin, 302, 306
Dobson, Michael, 50, 58, 69,
72
Donne, John, 51-53, 89
Doyle, Brian, 25, 42
Drury, Helen, 109, 119
Dryden, John, 49, 53, 89
Dumas, Alexandre, 310
Dumitriu, Geta, 68-69, 73
Durant, Alan, 250
Duridanov, Ivan, 139, 154
Duru-Bellat, Marie, 217, 229
Duţescu, Dan, 70, 72-73
Eagleton, Terry, 54, 58, 171,
177, 183, 191
Easthope, Anthony, 169, 177,
182, 189, 191
Eco, Umberto, 185, 191
Elin Pelin, 290
Eliot, George, 53
Eliot, Thomas Stearns, 52,
59, 90
Elistratova, Anna, 82, 84
Eminescu, Mihai, 62
Engels, Frederick, 83, 93,
284, 289, 293, 296
Engler, Balz, 25, 36, 42-43,
67, 73, 94
Fantham, Elaine, 23, 42
Fasold, Ralph, 147, 154
Faulkner, William, 11, 108
Fielding, Henry, 53, 70, 272274, 279, 311
Filipova, Kalina, 235
Fish, Stanley, 183, 192, 228
Fishman, Joshua A., 127, 134
Foucault, Michel, 173, 178,
298, 306-307
Fowler, Alastair, 48, 59
Fowles, John, 104, 310, 318
Freire, Paulo, 198
Freud, Sigmund, 305, 307
Frisch, Max, 310
Fromkin, Victoria, 140, 154
Frow, John, 189, 192
Frye, Northrop, 287, 294
Fulbright, James William,
261-262, 267
Gaidarova, Vessela, 290, 295
Garrick, David, 276
Gaskell, Elizabeth, 53
Gavriliu, Eugenia, 36, 42
Georgiev, Vladimir, 139, 154
Gheorghiţoiu, Andreea, 70,
72
Gill, Stephen Charles, 290,
295
Gladstone, William Ewart,
252
Glavin, John, 316, 320
Goastellec, Gaelle, 217, 229
Godwin, William, 299
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
von, 63, 273, 279
Goldsmith, Oliver, 272
Goldsworthy, Vesna, 252,
259
Goodman, Lizbeth, 51, 59
Gorak, Jan, 48-49, 59
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 254
Gorky, Maxim, 293, 295
Gottsched, Johann, 273
Graddol, David, 116, 120
Gray, Thomas, 53
Green, Keith, 172, 178
Greenblatt, Stephen, 91, 93
Greenshaw, Edwin, 26
Gregory, Marshall, 196, 204
Grimm, Peter, 68
Grosman, Meta, 78, 93
Grossberg, Lawrence, 189,
192
Guillory, John, 47, 59
Gumbrecht, Hans, 29, 42
Haas, Renate, 25, 36, 42, 43,
67, 72, 94
Habermas, Jürgen, 257
323
Hadzhikosev, Simeon, 275,
280, 284, 289, 291-293,
295, 300, 307
Hamilton, Paul, 24, 42
Hardcastle, John, 24-25, 42
Hardy, Thomas, 53, 70, 73
Harris, Roy, 147-148, 154
Harwood, Nigel, 109, 120
Hattaway, Michael, 236
Hayles, Katherine, 201-202,
206
Herbert, George, 53
Herder, Johann Gottfried, 23,
273
Herrick, Robert, 53
Hesse, Hermann, 310
Hewings, Martin, 119, 157163
Hobsbawm, Eric, 305, 307
Hoffmann, E. T. A., 299, 305
Holquist, Michael, 91-92,
194, 203-204, 207
Holt, Stephen, 235, 251, 256
Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 53
Hristoforov, Assen, 87, 93
Hugo, Victor, 63, 299, 310
Hulban, Horia, 36, 42
Humboldt, William von, 2324, 42
Hunt, Leigh, 290-291
Hutcheon, Linda, 91, 93,
181-182, 192
Huxley, Aldous, 25
Hyland, Ken, 109, 121
Ibsen, Henrik, 310
Iorga, Nicolae, 68, 73
Ivanov, Dmitri, 300, 307
Ivask, George, 287, 295
Jack, Ian, 289, 291-292, 295
324
Jackson, Emily Bernhard,
285, 295
James, Henry, 53, 301
Jeffrey, Francis, 285, 295
Jenkins, Jennifer, 117, 121,
129, 134
Johnson, David, 25, 42
Johnson, Paul, 291, 295
Johnson, Samuel, 273, 276
Johnstone, Bruce D., 218,
220, 229
Jordan, Glenn, 169, 178
Kachru, Braj, 125-126, 132,
134
Kafka, Franz, 310
Kästner, Erich, 310
Katamba, Francis, 145, 155
Keats, John, 53, 86, 89, 286292, 294, 296, 318
Kepke, Allen N., 315, 320
Kermode, Frank, 51-52, 59
Khristov, Kiril, 287
Kipling, Rudyard, 319
Klancher, Jon, 283, 295
Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, 273
Knights, Ben, 105-106, 108
Kogălniceanu, Mihail, 62, 64
Korda, Mihai, 227, 230
Kristeva, Julia, 252
Krylov, B., 84, 93
Kushner, Eva, 169, 174-175,
178
Lagerlöf, Selma, 310
Lamartine, Alphonse de, 63
Lamb, Charles, 290
Langland, William, 104
Lanson, Gustave, 276
Larsen-Freeman, Diane, 162,
163
Lea, Mary R., 109-110, 112,
121
LeBihan, Jill, 172, 178
Leech, Geoffrey, 140, 163
Legouis, Emile, 75, 82
Lehmann, Hans-Thies, 312,
320
Lerer, Seth, 81, 91, 93
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim,
273
Leung, Constant, 117, 121
Leviţchi, Leon, 70, 72-74
Lewis, Mathew G., 299
Likova, Rozaliya, 275, 281
Lillo, George, 273
Lindgren, Astrid, 310
Lorca, Federico García, 310
Lyons, John, 140
Lyubenov, Lyuben, 292, 295
MacCarthy, Fiona, 293, 296
MacDonald, Susan Peck,
109-110, 121
Macpherson, James, 272
McCrum, Robert, 123, 134
McEwan, Ian, 188, 192
McGann, Jerome, 284, 296
McLellan, David, 286, 296
Malmkjær, Kirsten, 145, 155
Man, Paul de, 28-29, 42, 191
Mann, Sandi, 206-207
Martin, Philip, 59, 120
Marvell, Andrew, 53
Marx, Karl, 83, 93, 284, 289,
293-294, 296
Masefield, John, 53
Maturin, Charles, 299
Maurois, Andre, 291, 296
Maybin, Janet, 12, 134
Mill, John Stuart, 25
Milne, Alexander A., 310311, 319
Milton, John, 12, 49, 53, 74,
255
Mincoff, Marco, 37, 75-77,
79-93, 101-102, 235, 289,
291, 296, 300, 307
Mineva, Milla, 250, 259
Mirabeau, Honoré, 273
Mitov, Dimitar, 101-102,
284-285, 287, 289-290,
292, 296
Molhova, Zhana, 239
Molière, (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), 61, 63, 69
Montesquieu, Charles, 63,
273
Moore, Thomas, 285
Morell, Teresa, 206, 207
Moretti, Franco, 85, 92-93
Moskov, Mosko, 139
Mueller-Vollmer, Kurt, 24,
42
Müller, Heiner, 310
Natoli, Joseph, 192
Nelson, Cary, 189, 192
Newmark, Peter, 31
Nicolescu, Adrian, 70, 73
Nicolescu, Liminita, 227,
229, 230
North, Sarah P., 109, 111,
120, 121
Ohala, John, 144, 155
Ohmann, Richard, 27, 43
O’Neill, Michael, 288, 296
O’Reilly, Laurie M., 124125, 134, 160, 163
325
Ossian, 63
Palmer, D. J., 25, 43
Palmer, Francis, 140
Paquette, Gabriel, 228, 230
Pennycook, Alastair, 131132, 134
Pepys, Samuel, 50
Perkins, David, 83-85, 91,
94, 285, 296
Peshev, Alexandar, 101-102,
284, 289, 292, 296
Petriceicu Haşdeu, Bogdan,
68
Phillipson, Robert, 117, 121,
127-129, 132, 134-135
Pinter, Harold, 310, 311
Piru, Alexandru, 66, 73
Pittock, Murray G. H., 87,
92, 94
Plekhanov, Georgi, 276
Pleşu, Andrei, 90, 94
Pocock, John, 257
Polo, Marco, 185, 192
Popa, Ecaterina, 36, 42
Pope, Alexander, 49, 53, 89,
272-273, 276-277, 290
Pound, Ezra, 8, 50, 59, 90
Pratchett, Terry, 310
Preda, Ioan Aurel, 70, 73
Protopopescu, Dragosh
(Dragoş), 69, 74
Pushkin, Alexander, 63, 287
Quirk, Randolph, 123, 135,
157, 159, 161-163
Radcliffe, Ann, 299, 305, 307
Rădulescu, Ion Eliade, 62, 72
Reid, Kerry, 315, 320
Remarque, Erich Maria, 310
Renwick, W. L., 289, 296
326
Richardson, Samuel, 272274, 279
Rilke, Rainer Maria, 310
Ringold, Dena, 222, 230
Robins, R. H., 140
Robinson, Andrew, 206-207
Rodman, Robert, 140, 154
Roe, Nicholas, 288, 296
Ross, Trevor, 47, 59
Rossetti, Christina, 53
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 273,
277
Rowling, J. K., 310-311
Royle, Nicholas, 57, 58
Ruhnken, David, 48
Russell, Bertrand, 293, 296
Russell, Charles, 181, 192
Russo, Alecu, 62
Said, Edward, 27, 43
Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de,
310
Salkeld, Duncan, 84, 94
Samraj, Betty, 109, 121
Santos, Denise, 116, 119
Sarasin, Lynne, 152, 155
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 310
Saussure, Ferdinand de, 24,
43, 140, 147, 149
Savoy, April, 206, 207
Scatton, Ernest, 236
Schellekens, Elisabeth, 189,
192
Schiller, Friedrich, 63
Schlegel, Friedrich, 23
Schleiermacher, Friedrich,
23-24
Scholes, Robert, 26, 43
Schryer, Catherine F., 110,
118
Schwarz, Wolfgang F., 275,
281
Scott, Sir Walter, 7-8, 63,
286-287, 292
Seidlhofer, Barbara, 129, 135
Sennett, Richard, 257
Sent Pierre, Bernarden de,
273
Shakespeare, William, 12,
42, 48-53, 56-59, 69, 7274, 82, 84-86, 109, 255,
272-273, 276, 291, 310
Sharp, Anna M., 153, 155
Shelley, Mary, 53, 307
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 9, 53,
85-86, 285-288, 290-292,
299, 318
Sheridan, Richard, 89, 273,
276
Shields, Ronald E., 315, 320
Shishmanov, Ivan, 271-278,
280-281
Sillitoe, Alan, 318
Sivori, Franco, 66-67
Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove, 128
Slavejkov, Pencho, 288
Smirnitski, Alexandr I., 139
Smollett, Tobias, 272
Solntsev, Vadim M., 139
Southey, Robert, 285, 289,
292, 295
Spasov, Dimiter, 157-158,
160-163
Spenser, Edmund, 49, 53
Spiering, Menno, 91, 94
Spitzer, Leo, 26, 75
St Clair, William, 49, 59
Stamenov, Christo, 36, 43,
76-77, 79-80, 82, 91, 94
Stanev, Emilian, 301, 303,
307
Ştefănescu-Drăgăneşti,
Virgiliu, 70, 74
Stefanov, Konstantin, 79, 91,
94, 271
Sterne, Lawrence, 10, 272,
279-280, 311
Stevenson, R. L., 53, 299
Stoker, Bram, 168, 175, 299
Stone, Donald, 176, 178
Street, Brian V., 109, 112,
121
Strindberg, August, 310
Strom, Kirsten, 173, 178
Swales, John, 109, 121-122
Swift, Jonathan, 53, 272-274,
277, 279, 311, 319
Swinburne, Algernon, 252
Taylor, Gary, 50, 59
Taylor, Samuel, 53
Taylor, Talbot, 146, 149, 154
Tennyson, Alfred, 53
Thackeray, William
Makepeace , 70, 74, 311
Thatcher, Margaret, 254
Thomas, Dylan, 255
Thompson, Ann, 236, 256
Thompson, James, 272
Thompson, Paul, 109, 122
Thurgar-Dawson, Chris, 105,
108
Tihanov, Galin, 85, 86, 94
Tillyard, E. M. W., 82, 84
Titsworth, B. Scott, 206-207
Todorov, Tzvetan, 252, 305,
308
Todorova, Maria, 251, 259
Toland, John, 276
327
Tolkien, J. R. R., 310-311
Trask, R. Larry, 140
Travers, P. L., 319
Trayanov, Teodor, 288, 301
Treichler, Paula, 189, 192
Tribble, Chris, 109, 122
Trollope, Anthony, 53
Trow, Martin, 217, 230
Tyson, Lois, 170, 174, 178
Tzankov, Georgi, 300, 308
Ullman, Stephen, 140
Van Valin, Robert, 143, 155
Vaughan, Henry, 53
Vazov, Ivan, 276, 301, 308
Vega, Quinn, 152, 155
Verga, Giovanni, 310
Verma, Shivendra K., 126127, 135
Verspoor, Marjorin, 150, 154
Vesselinov, Dimitar, 271,
281
Vian, Boris, 310
Vishwanathan, Gauri, 25, 43
Volney, Comte de, 63
Voltaire, (François-Marie
Arouet), 61, 63, 273, 277
Wadham-Smith, Nick, 166,
170, 178
Walsh, Marcus, 69, 74
Warnke, Frank J., 78-79, 94
328
Warren, Austin, 75, 94
Waterhouse, Keith, 318
Watson, R.W. Seton, 68, 73
Weimann, Robert, 82, 84, 92
Wellek, René, 26-27, 43, 75,
89, 92, 94, 284, 296
Wells, H. G., 53
Welsh, Irvine, 310, 311
Wieland, Christoph Martin,
273
Wignell, Peter, 109, 122
Wilde, Oscar, 53, 70, 74,
310, 317
Wilson, J. Dover, 82, 84
Wolf, Alison, 217, 230
Woolf, Virginia, 52, 310
Wordsworth, Dorothy, 53
Wordsworth, William, 53,
192, 285, 289-290, 292,
295
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 53
Yasenov, Hristo, 301
Yin Qiping, 176, 178
Young, Edward, 49, 63, 272
Young, Robert J. C., 87, 92,
94, 306
Young, Tory, 114, 122
Zhivkov, Todor, 252
Ziolkowski, Jan, 28, 41, 43
Zvegintsev, Vladimir A., 139
English Studies On This Side
Post-2007 Reckonings
Prepress: Georgi Tashkov
Plovdiv University Press, 2009
Plovdiv, 2009
ISBN 978-954-423-568-0