Rituals of Mentorship: Power and Consecration in the Literary Field of Communist Bulgaria
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20964689Keywords:
Plamen Doynov; literary field; People’s Republic of Bulgaria; mentorship; literary generations; self-criticism; cultural power; patronage; memory; ritualsAbstract
This review examines Plamen Doynov’s “Mentors and Geniuses: Three Rituals in the Literary Field of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria: Meetings with the Leader – Self-Criticism – Conversations with the Young” (2025) as a significant contribu-tion to the study of the literary field in communist Bulgaria. It explores how, through three key rituals ‒ meetings with the Leader, self-criticism sessions, and conversations with young writers and poets ‒ the book reconstructs the mecha-nisms of legitimation, discipline, and reproduction that structured the cultural life of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria. The review interprets mentorship not merely as a literary or pedagogical practice, but as a specific technology of cultural pow-er through which authority, literary careers, and forms of belonging were shaped and sustained. Particular attention is devoted to Doynov’s ability to combine archival precision with sensitivity to human experience, reconstructing not only the institutional mechanisms of socialist culture but also the world in which they were lived and inhabited. In this sense, Mentors and Geniuses moves beyond the boundaries of literary history and emerges as an important study of ritual, authority, memory, and the lived experience of the literary field under the communist regime.
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