Denitsa Petrova
Papers of BAS. Humanities and Social Sciences
Vol. 7, 2020, No. 2
Historiographical marginalia and colophons
in Bulgarian literature of the 10th-18th century
Denitsa Petrova
Abstract. Marginal notes are brief notes added by the author apart from the main text of a codex. They came into Bulgarian literature from Byzantine literature, adopting from the latter certain stable compositional patterns, invariable formulations and fixed expressions. They belong to the genres both of the historical record and the chronicle, which makes them equally interesting for historians and linguists. Since their first appearance at the time of the spread of Slavic literature in Bulgaria, and down to the waning of the literary schools in the 18th century, historiographical marginalia underwent various transformations as a genre. They gradually turned into extensive forewords and afterwords, some of which amounted to brief narratives, while others were sorts of chronicles. These modifications do not diminish the value of marginal notes as historical sources. When the other historical-chronicular genres in Bulgarian literature had already disappeared, marginalia continued to develop.
Keywords: marginalia, Old Bulgarian literature, historical sources