The Black Monk of Emilian Stanev and his Gothic Brethren

Abstract

Emiliyan Stanev’s unfinished short novel The Black Monk still remains on the margins of his oeuvre, and also of research interest on the part of Bulgarian literary studies. On the other hand, the plot and the eponymous character fit it into a wide network of works by English, German, French, Russian and other authors, in the traditions of Gothic, Romanticism, Realism and their varieties, where the ‘Black Monk’ motif is a locus communis. I call the potential of such loci communes to form sets of works partially connected by separate, often contextually undetermined threads, polyvalent intertextuality. Comparing through it works by different authors, from different genres and nationalities, I come to the conclusion that their interaction can be described, in terms such as de- and reterritorialization (Deleuze and Guattari), as rhizomatic and gothic. This paper does not range over historical-philosophical, ethical, socio-political, etc. aspects of Stanev's work.