The Bulgarian Liberation Myth and its Spatial Realisations: The Example of Shipka Peak

Abstract

The aim of this article is to reconstruct the course of the process of creation and development of the myth of Shipka in Bulgarian collective consciousness. The study offers an analysis of literary texts, monuments and rituals intended to reproduce the memory of events related to the peak. In doing so, it provides a description of how the site of memory was created, and how the symbolism and meanings given to Shipka developed through cultural texts and rituals serving to cultivate the myth associated with it. The author describes this myth in the context of the struggle for symbolic space, involving the creation of two separate narratives (Russian and Bulgarian) concerning the same historical event.