https://doi.org/10.60056/Lit.2024.33.255-327
https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=1306322
Bestselling Novels: Titling Strategies, Cartographies of Desire, Visions of Sociality
Inna Peleva
Paisii Hilendarski University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria
peleva@uni-plovdiv.bg
The study discusses over a hundred Bulgarian translations of contemporary “chick lit” titles. The vocabulary range of these titles serves as a basis for the identification of key concepts used as building blocks for plotlines and fictional chronotopes. One of the researcher’s concerns is how present-day narratives, focused on a love story, represent property-related issues, and how by opting for the bookshop (a widely used space in contemporary popular fiction as a locus that conflates commerce and spirituality) and the library as settings, the genre ends up being co-opted and abused by a different type of literary texts. Some attention goes to a peculiar thematic line (“a story with a maid”) in the contemporary Western crime novel, thus highlighting the collaboration between the different varieties of popular fiction (romance novel, crime novel) in shaping the public worldview.
Keywords: title, romance novel, crime novel, World War II novels, literature and social critique, reading and therapy
For citation: Peleva, I. Bestselling Novels: Titling Strategies, Cartographies of Desire, Visions of Sociality. // The Literature, Year XVIII, 2024, Issue 33. Sofia: Univerisity Press “St. Kliment Ohridski”. (In Bulgarian)
About the author: Prof. Inna Peleva, D. Litt. teaches Bulgarian culture and literature at Paisii Hilendarski University of Plovdiv. Her research and publications are focused on phenomena and processes in the Bulgarian cultural space throughout its historical and political transformations from Paisii to the present day. She is the author of “Texts Read: Studies on Existing and Missing Pages in Bulgarian Literature” (1994), “The Ideologist of the Nation: Words on Vazov” (1994), “Botev: The Body of Nationalism” (1998, 2015), “Revivals” (1999), “Places from the Questionnaire” (2000), “Aleko Konstantinov: A Biography of Reading” (2002), “Yordan Radichkov: Word, Story and Sadness” (2004), “Children of Lesser Gods” (2012), “Georgi Markov: Photographs with Acquaintances” (2017), “During Those Years” (2020).
