GLOSSES, MARGINALIA AND OTHER METATEXTS DISCUSSED FROM THE ORALITY PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate traces of orality in the Slavonic written tradition contained in marginal glosses and various annotations added by the authors of texts and their readers. Until now, they had been studied mainly for the reason that they were often written in a language far from the standardized one, they reflected the local dialects and the way of expressing characteristic for the spoken language. From orality perspective they should be seen as a kind of lively dialogue between the writers and readers, through the nature of the medium such as were the manuscripts and printed books later on. This is especially important for those cultures where writing was not a widespread and main form of communication, thus for the tradition of the Balkan countries, especially Bulgaria, where Turkish occupation interrupted the natural development of literary creation.