The Image of Bulgarians in the Poem Cycle Rapsodije bolgarskega goslarja by Anton Aškerc: The Imagological Perspective

After a brief presentation of imagology as a field of contemporary comparative literature, the paper critically analyses the image of Bulgarians in the poem cycle Rapsodije bolgarskega goslarja (1902) by Slovenian poet Anton Aškerc (1856–1912). This cycle of thirteen poems deals with the liberation struggle of the Bulgarians from the Turks. The Bulgarian translations of the poems received a relatively extensive reception, which was not true of the original version in Slovenia. The present paper attempts to demonstrate the origin and function of the image of Bulgarians as representatives of a foreign nation or as the Other in the intercultural transfer of Aškerc’s cycle. From an imagological perspective, it sheds light on the social and cultural processes in which the poet’s image of the Foreign was formed.Keywords: image, drawing, text, manuscript, creative process