Georgi Tsanev

(also Georgi Tsanev Tsenov). Born Sept. 21 (Oct. 3), 1895, in Borovan, Vratsa District. Bulgarian literary critic and scholar. People’s Cultural Worker of Bulgaria (1971). Academician of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (1974). Member of the Communist Party of Bulgaria since 1944.

Tsanev graduated from the University of Sofia and became a professor there in 1949. He was director of the Institute of Literature of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences from 1957 to 1963. Tsanev made his debut as a critic in the early 1920’s. In his Writers and Creativity (1932) and Literary Essays (1938) he defended the principles of realistic art. A number of his works deal with the development of Bulgarian revolutionary literature, problems of the realistic method, literary trends, and modern Bulgarian literary relations. These works include lavorov’s Path (1947), Pages in the History of Bulgarian Literature (1953; 3rd enlarged ed., 1958), The Path of Realism (1960), Tradition and Innovation (1965), and Writers and Problems (1965).