Death and Memory in the Context of the Contemporary Bulgarian Street Posted Obituary
Abstract
This project deals with the problem of the memory about the dead in the context of the Bulgarian street posted obituaries. The paper presents a short description of this phenomenon in Bulgaria as well as a short reconstruction of its historical developing. The tradition of posting publicly death announcements in Bulgaria is compared with the newspaper posthumous biographical article – obituary. Through this comparison the main differences, but also the main functions of the both memory forms are revealed. The conclusion is that as a whole, the obituary stays in the field of the biography and consequently – history, while the obituary is in the realm of the ritual and myth.
Keywords
necrolog, obituary, memory, ritual, biography.