This analysis of Chekhov’s short story “The Little Joke” (“Shutochka”) and the long-short story “... more This analysis of Chekhov’s short story “The Little Joke” (“Shutochka”) and the long-short story “The Kiss” (“Potselui”) postulates that when this writer’s work is viewed as an epitome of modernity, that is, the last two and a half centuries of Western intellectual and artistic life, it is revealing to interpret his prose fiction by way of a poetics based on certain phenomenological and existentialist premises. According to this philosophical tradition, the non-human is identical with itself because it does not change. Conversely, the human is non-identical with itself because human beings constantly create themselves by means of their free choices and actions, and thus always alter and transcend themselves. The paradox of human identity and non-identity with oneself expresses also contrariety: if something is simultaneously identical and non-identical with itself, it is self-contradictory, ambivalent, and ambiguous. The main point of my analysis is to show that through various narra...
Signore e Signori, welcome to the show! I mean the one-man show “Drafts” by Parthenos/Virgo Resto... more Signore e Signori, welcome to the show! I mean the one-man show “Drafts” by Parthenos/Virgo Restored and Presented by Virginia Stoianova or, more briefly, “Drafts” by Virginia. As you see, it consists of 35 sketches by the young Bulgarian artist Virginia Stoianova (“Virzhiniia,” in Bulgarian) and a concept by me. The exhibition takes place in March 1994 in the Lessedra gallery in Sofia, Bulgaria, which was ranked as the best private gallery in the country for 1991, 1992, and 1993 by Kultura, the leading weekly newspaper for culture. The show is a hoax: the obviously contemporary drawings are accompanied by purported scholarly documents which present them as Protorenaissance works. Taken in by the concept, the visitors and the media become involuntary participants in and propagators of the mystification, thus turning it into a piece of performance art on a national scale. The exhibition, which entwines visual art, performance, literature, and philosophy, both artistically challenges and critically analyzes some mental, social, and cultural paradigms in postcommunist Bulgaria. Its success comes from the fact that some widespread Bulgarian fantasies and assumptions about their national cultural identity are enacted as real. In Act One, I present the concept of the exhibition as outlined in the pseudo-scholarly documents which frame the drawings. In Act Two, I review the reaction of the public and the media. Finally, in Act Three, I offer a revised English version of an article I wrote in Bulgaria, which analyzes the meaning of the show and its cultural repercussions, and which ends the performance.
Signore e Signori, welcome to the show! I mean the one-man show “Drafts” by Parthenos/Virgo Resto... more Signore e Signori, welcome to the show! I mean the one-man show “Drafts” by Parthenos/Virgo Restored and Presented by Virginia Stoianova or, more briefly, “Drafts” by Virginia. As you see, it consists of 35 sketches by the young Bulgarian artist Virginia Stoianova (“Virzhiniia,” in Bulgarian) and a concept by me. The exhibition takes place in March 1994 in the Lessedra gallery in Sofia, Bulgaria, which was ranked as the best private gallery in the country for 1991, 1992, and 1993 by Kultura, the leading weekly newspaper for culture. The show is a hoax: the obviously contemporary drawings are accompanied by purported scholarly documents which present them as Protorenaissance works. Taken in by the concept, the visitors and the media become involuntary participants in and propagators of the mystification, thus turning it into a piece of performance art on a national scale. The exhibition, which entwines visual art, performance, literature, and philosophy, both artistically challenges and critically analyzes some mental, social, and cultural paradigms in postcommunist Bulgaria. Its success comes from the fact that some widespread Bulgarian fantasies and assumptions about their national cultural identity are enacted as real. In Act One, I present the concept of the exhibition as outlined in the pseudo-scholarly documents which frame the drawings. In Act Two, I review the reaction of the public and the media. Finally, in Act Three, I offer a revised English version of an article I wrote in Bulgaria, which analyzes the meaning of the show and its cultural repercussions, and which ends the performance.
Umberto Eco's brilliance in literary and cultural theory, in semiotics, and in creative writi... more Umberto Eco's brilliance in literary and cultural theory, in semiotics, and in creative writing; the immense historical range of his interests; and his free use of several modem and ancient languages make him a paragon of comparative literature. Yet for some twenty-five years, work on Eco in this country has taken separate paths: critiques ofhis semiotics; of his three famous novels TAe Name ofthe Rose ( 1 980; here I give the dates of the first Italian publication), Foucault's Pendulum (1988), and The Island ofthe Day Before ( 1 994); ofhis tenets on popular, avant-garde, and postmodern culture; and of his ideas of literary interpretation. Peter Bondanella's Umberto Eco and the Open Text and the Rocco Capozzi anthology Reading Eco (several other collections are forthcoming) point to a new phase in Eco studies, namely the scrutiny of his oeuvre in both its totality and transformations. Bondanella has consistently demonstrated his expertise in presenting major facets of Italian culture to English-speaking readers, who remain insufficiently familiar with them. Umberto Eco and the Open Text, the first comprehensive study of its subject in English, follows in the steps ofhis The Cinema ofFederico Fellini (1993) and The Films ofRoberto Rossellini (1993). The most appealing feature of Bondanella's latest study is its obvious usefulness both for those making their first acquaintance with Eco and for specialists. The former will appreciate the clear outline ofEco's most arcane theories and the broad scope of the book, which covers all major features of Eco's writings and personality. The latter will find the rich biographical and bibliographical data extremely helpful (often provided or corrected by Eco himself), as well as the many digressions on Eco's Italian context and the ingenious readings of his three novels. Bondanella presents Eco by combining the chronological-biographical and thematic principles, which in this case overlap. He concentrates on Eco's major books and ideas but often augments our grasp ofthem with references to obscure publications by or about Eco in both Italian and English. Bondanella has chosen not to write a critical biography (xvi), but rather a portrait of "Eco's always evolving thought" (193). For Bondanella, Eco is much more than an exemplary academic; he is a protean intellectual, always the same in his creative passion and power and always new and contemporary in the forms ofhis creations. He is a Janus figure in every respect. His career is "a complicated Odyssey from Thomist aesthetics to postmodern fiction" (xv), and his writing is a "mixture of humor and erudition" (16); The Name ofthe Rose bridges "the gap between the erudite, academic, philosophical reader and the avid consumer of best-selling pulp fiction and detective stories" (106). Eco stays away from political parties, yet always takes a progressive "engaged political and cultural position" (157). He is an academic and artistic Proteus because his mind is eclectic, receptive, and open; he is "dedicated to such principles as pluralism, freedom of information, democracy, and intellectual tolerance" (88). All the facets of this kaleidoscopic figure come together in the powerful conclusion where Bondanella argues that Eco's personal traits converge with postmodern culture, making him an epitome of"the postmodern sensibility" (199).
Abstract: The dissertation details certain major existential issues faced by men and women in the... more Abstract: The dissertation details certain major existential issues faced by men and women in the era of modernity (that is, the last two and a half centuries), as represented in the works of Anton Chekhov (1860-1904). It outlines a poetics of this writer's prose fiction based on ...
My first task here will be to analyze The King of Comedy directed by Martin Scorsese (1983) as a ... more My first task here will be to analyze The King of Comedy directed by Martin Scorsese (1983) as a film about the aesthetics of the sublime. Then I will show in what sense another film about stand-up comedy, Lenny directed by Bob Fosse (1974), belongs to the aesthetics of the beautiful. And my third point will be to plead that despite the fervor with which postmodernists and modernists each defend the rightness of their positions, the two aesthetics as enacted by the movies have their own proper domains. They do not exclude but complement each other today.
Signore e Signori, welcome to the show! I mean the one-man show “Drafts” by Parthenos/Virgo Resto... more Signore e Signori, welcome to the show! I mean the one-man show “Drafts” by Parthenos/Virgo Restored and Presented by Virginia Stoianova or, more briefly, “Drafts” by Virginia. As you see, it consists of 35 sketches by the young Bulgarian artist Virginia Stoianova (“Virzhiniia,” in Bulgarian) and a concept by me. The exhibition takes place in March 1994 in the Lessedra gallery in Sofia, Bulgaria, which was ranked as the best private gallery in the country for 1991, 1992, and 1993 by Kultura, the leading weekly newspaper for culture. The show is a hoax: the obviously contemporary drawings are accompanied by purported scholarly documents which present them as Protorenaissance works. Taken in by the concept, the visitors and the media become involuntary participants in and propagators of the mystification, thus turning it into a piece of performance art on a national scale. The exhibition, which entwines visual art, performance, literature, and philosophy, both artistically challenges ...
... Narratives of National Cultural Identity: The Canonization of Thomas Eakins. NIKITA NANKOV. F... more ... Narratives of National Cultural Identity: The Canonization of Thomas Eakins. NIKITA NANKOV. Full Text: PDF.
The study “Sartre’s Theory of Temporality in Being and Nothingness in Anglo-American Academic Dis... more The study “Sartre’s Theory of Temporality in Being and Nothingness in Anglo-American Academic Discourse” presents in some detail Sartre’s ideas of time in his magnum opus Being and Nothingness ( L’Etre et le neant , 1943). The topic is dictated by the fact that these ideas have not been fully discussed by original philosophical literature in Anglo-American academia (English translations from French are not considered). The essay details three topics. The first, introductory part outlines the way Sartre’s theory of temporality in Being and Nothingness has or, rather, has not been fully analyzed in the specialized and popular philosophical literature in English. The overview covers some 65 titles on Sartre, existentialism, and phenomenology. The second section delineates Sartre’s theory of temporality in Being and Nothingness . The final part speaks of Sartre’s ideas of time in his literary criticism, namely, in his essay “On The Sound and the Fury : Time in the Work of Faulkner.” Сту...
This analysis of Chekhov’s short story “The Little Joke” (“Shutochka”) and the long-short story “... more This analysis of Chekhov’s short story “The Little Joke” (“Shutochka”) and the long-short story “The Kiss” (“Potselui”) postulates that when this writer’s work is viewed as an epitome of modernity, that is, the last two and a half centuries of Western intellectual and artistic life, it is revealing to interpret his prose fiction by way of a poetics based on certain phenomenological and existentialist premises. According to this philosophical tradition, the non-human is identical with itself because it does not change. Conversely, the human is non-identical with itself because human beings constantly create themselves by means of their free choices and actions, and thus always alter and transcend themselves. The paradox of human identity and non-identity with oneself expresses also contrariety: if something is simultaneously identical and non-identical with itself, it is self-contradictory, ambivalent, and ambiguous. The main point of my analysis is to show that through various narra...
Signore e Signori, welcome to the show! I mean the one-man show “Drafts” by Parthenos/Virgo Resto... more Signore e Signori, welcome to the show! I mean the one-man show “Drafts” by Parthenos/Virgo Restored and Presented by Virginia Stoianova or, more briefly, “Drafts” by Virginia. As you see, it consists of 35 sketches by the young Bulgarian artist Virginia Stoianova (“Virzhiniia,” in Bulgarian) and a concept by me. The exhibition takes place in March 1994 in the Lessedra gallery in Sofia, Bulgaria, which was ranked as the best private gallery in the country for 1991, 1992, and 1993 by Kultura, the leading weekly newspaper for culture. The show is a hoax: the obviously contemporary drawings are accompanied by purported scholarly documents which present them as Protorenaissance works. Taken in by the concept, the visitors and the media become involuntary participants in and propagators of the mystification, thus turning it into a piece of performance art on a national scale. The exhibition, which entwines visual art, performance, literature, and philosophy, both artistically challenges and critically analyzes some mental, social, and cultural paradigms in postcommunist Bulgaria. Its success comes from the fact that some widespread Bulgarian fantasies and assumptions about their national cultural identity are enacted as real. In Act One, I present the concept of the exhibition as outlined in the pseudo-scholarly documents which frame the drawings. In Act Two, I review the reaction of the public and the media. Finally, in Act Three, I offer a revised English version of an article I wrote in Bulgaria, which analyzes the meaning of the show and its cultural repercussions, and which ends the performance.
Signore e Signori, welcome to the show! I mean the one-man show “Drafts” by Parthenos/Virgo Resto... more Signore e Signori, welcome to the show! I mean the one-man show “Drafts” by Parthenos/Virgo Restored and Presented by Virginia Stoianova or, more briefly, “Drafts” by Virginia. As you see, it consists of 35 sketches by the young Bulgarian artist Virginia Stoianova (“Virzhiniia,” in Bulgarian) and a concept by me. The exhibition takes place in March 1994 in the Lessedra gallery in Sofia, Bulgaria, which was ranked as the best private gallery in the country for 1991, 1992, and 1993 by Kultura, the leading weekly newspaper for culture. The show is a hoax: the obviously contemporary drawings are accompanied by purported scholarly documents which present them as Protorenaissance works. Taken in by the concept, the visitors and the media become involuntary participants in and propagators of the mystification, thus turning it into a piece of performance art on a national scale. The exhibition, which entwines visual art, performance, literature, and philosophy, both artistically challenges and critically analyzes some mental, social, and cultural paradigms in postcommunist Bulgaria. Its success comes from the fact that some widespread Bulgarian fantasies and assumptions about their national cultural identity are enacted as real. In Act One, I present the concept of the exhibition as outlined in the pseudo-scholarly documents which frame the drawings. In Act Two, I review the reaction of the public and the media. Finally, in Act Three, I offer a revised English version of an article I wrote in Bulgaria, which analyzes the meaning of the show and its cultural repercussions, and which ends the performance.
Umberto Eco's brilliance in literary and cultural theory, in semiotics, and in creative writi... more Umberto Eco's brilliance in literary and cultural theory, in semiotics, and in creative writing; the immense historical range of his interests; and his free use of several modem and ancient languages make him a paragon of comparative literature. Yet for some twenty-five years, work on Eco in this country has taken separate paths: critiques ofhis semiotics; of his three famous novels TAe Name ofthe Rose ( 1 980; here I give the dates of the first Italian publication), Foucault's Pendulum (1988), and The Island ofthe Day Before ( 1 994); ofhis tenets on popular, avant-garde, and postmodern culture; and of his ideas of literary interpretation. Peter Bondanella's Umberto Eco and the Open Text and the Rocco Capozzi anthology Reading Eco (several other collections are forthcoming) point to a new phase in Eco studies, namely the scrutiny of his oeuvre in both its totality and transformations. Bondanella has consistently demonstrated his expertise in presenting major facets of Italian culture to English-speaking readers, who remain insufficiently familiar with them. Umberto Eco and the Open Text, the first comprehensive study of its subject in English, follows in the steps ofhis The Cinema ofFederico Fellini (1993) and The Films ofRoberto Rossellini (1993). The most appealing feature of Bondanella's latest study is its obvious usefulness both for those making their first acquaintance with Eco and for specialists. The former will appreciate the clear outline ofEco's most arcane theories and the broad scope of the book, which covers all major features of Eco's writings and personality. The latter will find the rich biographical and bibliographical data extremely helpful (often provided or corrected by Eco himself), as well as the many digressions on Eco's Italian context and the ingenious readings of his three novels. Bondanella presents Eco by combining the chronological-biographical and thematic principles, which in this case overlap. He concentrates on Eco's major books and ideas but often augments our grasp ofthem with references to obscure publications by or about Eco in both Italian and English. Bondanella has chosen not to write a critical biography (xvi), but rather a portrait of "Eco's always evolving thought" (193). For Bondanella, Eco is much more than an exemplary academic; he is a protean intellectual, always the same in his creative passion and power and always new and contemporary in the forms ofhis creations. He is a Janus figure in every respect. His career is "a complicated Odyssey from Thomist aesthetics to postmodern fiction" (xv), and his writing is a "mixture of humor and erudition" (16); The Name ofthe Rose bridges "the gap between the erudite, academic, philosophical reader and the avid consumer of best-selling pulp fiction and detective stories" (106). Eco stays away from political parties, yet always takes a progressive "engaged political and cultural position" (157). He is an academic and artistic Proteus because his mind is eclectic, receptive, and open; he is "dedicated to such principles as pluralism, freedom of information, democracy, and intellectual tolerance" (88). All the facets of this kaleidoscopic figure come together in the powerful conclusion where Bondanella argues that Eco's personal traits converge with postmodern culture, making him an epitome of"the postmodern sensibility" (199).
Abstract: The dissertation details certain major existential issues faced by men and women in the... more Abstract: The dissertation details certain major existential issues faced by men and women in the era of modernity (that is, the last two and a half centuries), as represented in the works of Anton Chekhov (1860-1904). It outlines a poetics of this writer's prose fiction based on ...
My first task here will be to analyze The King of Comedy directed by Martin Scorsese (1983) as a ... more My first task here will be to analyze The King of Comedy directed by Martin Scorsese (1983) as a film about the aesthetics of the sublime. Then I will show in what sense another film about stand-up comedy, Lenny directed by Bob Fosse (1974), belongs to the aesthetics of the beautiful. And my third point will be to plead that despite the fervor with which postmodernists and modernists each defend the rightness of their positions, the two aesthetics as enacted by the movies have their own proper domains. They do not exclude but complement each other today.
Signore e Signori, welcome to the show! I mean the one-man show “Drafts” by Parthenos/Virgo Resto... more Signore e Signori, welcome to the show! I mean the one-man show “Drafts” by Parthenos/Virgo Restored and Presented by Virginia Stoianova or, more briefly, “Drafts” by Virginia. As you see, it consists of 35 sketches by the young Bulgarian artist Virginia Stoianova (“Virzhiniia,” in Bulgarian) and a concept by me. The exhibition takes place in March 1994 in the Lessedra gallery in Sofia, Bulgaria, which was ranked as the best private gallery in the country for 1991, 1992, and 1993 by Kultura, the leading weekly newspaper for culture. The show is a hoax: the obviously contemporary drawings are accompanied by purported scholarly documents which present them as Protorenaissance works. Taken in by the concept, the visitors and the media become involuntary participants in and propagators of the mystification, thus turning it into a piece of performance art on a national scale. The exhibition, which entwines visual art, performance, literature, and philosophy, both artistically challenges ...
... Narratives of National Cultural Identity: The Canonization of Thomas Eakins. NIKITA NANKOV. F... more ... Narratives of National Cultural Identity: The Canonization of Thomas Eakins. NIKITA NANKOV. Full Text: PDF.
The study “Sartre’s Theory of Temporality in Being and Nothingness in Anglo-American Academic Dis... more The study “Sartre’s Theory of Temporality in Being and Nothingness in Anglo-American Academic Discourse” presents in some detail Sartre’s ideas of time in his magnum opus Being and Nothingness ( L’Etre et le neant , 1943). The topic is dictated by the fact that these ideas have not been fully discussed by original philosophical literature in Anglo-American academia (English translations from French are not considered). The essay details three topics. The first, introductory part outlines the way Sartre’s theory of temporality in Being and Nothingness has or, rather, has not been fully analyzed in the specialized and popular philosophical literature in English. The overview covers some 65 titles on Sartre, existentialism, and phenomenology. The second section delineates Sartre’s theory of temporality in Being and Nothingness . The final part speaks of Sartre’s ideas of time in his literary criticism, namely, in his essay “On The Sound and the Fury : Time in the Work of Faulkner.” Сту...
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