Ivan N. PetrovsThe Development of the Bulgarian Literary Language: From Incunabula to First Grammars, Late FifteenthEarly Seventeenth Century examines the history of the first printed Cyrillic books and their role in the development of the Bulgarian literary language. In the literary culture of the Southern Slavs, especially the Bulgarians, the period that began at the end of the fifteenth century and covered the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is often seen as a foreshadowing of the pre-national era of modern times. In particular, the centuries-old manuscript tradition was gradually replaced by the Cyrillic printed book, whichafter the incunabula of Krakow and Montenegrowas published in such centers as Târgovite, Prague, Venice, Serbian monasteries, Vilnius, Moscow, Zabudów, Lviv, Ostroh, and many others. Petrov shows how the study of old Slavic prints is closely linked to the processes that determined the emergence of modern literary languages in the Slavia Orthodoxa area, including the influence of the liturgical Church Slavonic language shared by the Orthodox Slavs, which was increasingly standardized and codified at that time. The perspective of a language historian brings new light to the complex and multidimensional issues of this important transitional period of Slavic history and culture.
Contents
Preface to the English translation
Introduction
Chapter 1. Church Slavonic and its Influence on Bulgarian: Conceptions of Description and Interpretation
Chapter 2. Incunabula and Cyrillic Old Prints: Questions of Taxonomy and Nomenclature
Chapter 3. South Slavic Cyrillic Paleotypy in the 16th Century: Basic Traditions and Source Contexts
Conclusions
List of Source Text Editions
References
Further Reading
Indices
