Бойка Илиева

The essay is the first attempt to encompass the reception of the renowned Italian woman writer Matilde Serao in Bulgaria. The most frequent place of publication of her works were the pages of the Bulgarian journals and the most active period of the reception was from the 1890s to 1920s. This is exactly the period when Bulgarian literature started experimenting with generic and self-reflexive techniques on the one hand, and with a more socially grounded approach to writing fiction, on the other hand. As a result of the poetic of Mathilde Serao, which contains both these trends, fitted very well the taste of the Bulgarian reading audience. For the period at question, we found twenty-three translations in fourteen different journals, as well as several critical reviews of her work. After providing quantitative data of appearance of Matilde Serao in Bulgaria we describe the translators’ choices of works and provide hypotheses on the identity of her translators, and on the influence which her writing had on the Bulgarian literary scene.

This paper offers observations on some of the recently established practices in academic publishing in the field of humanities that directly relate to the introduction of minimum national requirements for the scholarly activity of aspirants for academic promotion. The enactment of the science metrics has mobilized the scientific community to strive for multiple academic publications and an increase in their citation rate. A troubling question as to whether the quantification of science diminishes its quality arises. On the other hand, the new requirements provoke the emergence of a number of pragmatic publishing strategies, some of which are at contradiction with academic ethics.