Faculty of Slavic studies

(published in: La rivista di Engramma. La tradizione classica nella memoria occidentale, aprile/maggio 135 (2016))
The paper is focused on the problem of the body of the nymph, who is considered on the one hand as a mythological character, and on the other as a Pathosformel in Aby Warburg's terms. The historical period at the center of the present study is the Italian Renaissance of the 14th and 15th centuries with some references to Classical Antiquity. The nymph's body is interpreted as a special kind of 'inhuman' body that could be defined as incorporeal, divine or demonic, intellectual etc., but in the final analysis, its most important mark of inhumanity proves to be the fact that it is a female body. As a female body it establishes itself as an object of desire, so the paper is attempting to trace the ways in which this female body has been apprehended and represented by the imagination of the 14th and 15th centuries. As a point of intersection of desire, female, and inhuman, the figure of the nymph provokes two main problems: the problem of the essence of the nymph's body, and the problem of defining the borders of that body. The paper claims that a single answer could be suggested for both questions – it is the nymph's metamorphic quality, understood both as active and passive. The nymph's distinctive feature is that her body becomes a cause of transformation, and simultaneously, the object of a transformation. The provided examples are derived from Italian Renaissance literature and art, and from Aby Warburg's essays.

Margaret Dimitrova, Dimiter Peev. On the History of the History - Copies and Revisions of Paisii Hilandarski's Text.
This paper offers a concise check-list of the extant copies of "Istorija slavenobolgarskaja" (Slavo-Bulgarian History) (1762) by monk Paisii Hilendarski.