Full Description
What is the relationship between writing systems and nationalism? How can different alphabets coexist in the same country? What is the destiny of the Cyrillic alphabet in Europe? Giustina Selvelli's original work provides detailed answers to these far-reaching and potentially divisive questions and many more by examining several intriguing debates on topics of alphabets and national identity in a number of countries from the Balkan area over the course of the last 100 years. Following an encompassing perspective on alphabetic diversity, Selvelli, an expert on Southeast European Studies, reconstructs the ideological context of national discourses connected to the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets, also taking a look at the Arabic and Glagolitic scripts, and interweaving issues on the symbolism of the alphabet with the complex recent history of the region, marked by the parallel influences of the East and the West. She also sheds light on the impact of a range of alphabet policies on ethnolinguistic minorities, proposing a new definition of "alphabetic rights" with special regard to the multiethnic legacy of the former Ottoman and Habsburg empires. This comprehensive book makes us discover the privileged role that writing systems played in the region's delicate post-imperial and post-socialist transitions, leaving us captivated by peculiar stories such as that of the utopian "Yugoslav alphabet".
Contents
Preface; Introduction; Reception of the Abecedar Primer (1925) in Bulgaria; The Latinization Ideology and the Bulgarian Debates; The Contrast Between Arabic and Latin Scripts Among the Bulgarian Turks; Serbo-Croatian in Two Scripts: Digraphia, Alphabet Synthesis and Biliteracy; Cyrillic at War: Script Ideologies in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941-1945; The Rediscovery of Glagolitic: From Regional to National Phenomenon; The Modified Status of Cyrillic in Post-Socialist Croatia and Serbia; Bulgarian Cyrillic Between Tradition and Modernity: The Kronsteiner Affair; The Popular Dimension of the Cyrillic Alphabet and the Rediscovery of Glagolitic; Final Notes; List of References.
