въобразена

An account of Bulgaria’s history is here introduced classed as an “imagined text” which was in all probability the brainchild of Konstantin Fotinov (1785-1858). Evidence for the project for such a text has been garnered from material in the Fotinov archive, e.g. his correspondence, and the title of a manuscript which has by now disappeared: A Look At the Origins of the Bulgarians and the Beginning of Bulgarian History as well as excerpts from works by various writers who are still the staple of studies on the Middle Ages in Bulgaria, such as Ioan Zonara, Procopius of Kesaria, Nikita Choniat, Georgi Acropolit, Georgi Kedrin and others. These, and Fotinov’s published works, provide groundwork for reconstructing the content, the fundamental concepts and methodology of this “History”. The hypothesis for the presumed existence of the draft calls forth some thoughts on the role of historical studies in the emergence of the Bulgarian national identity.

The findings presented here are results of a more general research of the “geography” of Svoboda/Nezavisimost Newspaper (1869–1874). The texts under analysis were not only written, but they were also published on the pages of a periodical. Nevertheless these texts are in close relation to the sphere of imagining and the imagined. The topic of imagined texts is more or less inspired by the thesis about the nation as an imagined community. So the problem of the imagined geography calls for a discussion on the way in which certain texts perform an important function in the process of imagining the community, in our case – imagining the Bulgarian nation.