Knowledge and Fantasy in the Novels “When the Man was not” and “The Brave Chung” by Dimitar Angelov

The paper focuses on two novels by Dimitar Agelov (“When the Man was not”, published in 1941, and “The Brave Chung”, published in 1953) that were defined as fantasy by literary critics. The novels are intended for children and teenagers, so the emphasis is as much on the fun intrigue as it is on a certain didactic idea. The paper comments on the problem of knowledge as a leading idea of the two novels. They present the life of several generations of monkeys which were named by the author chungs and poma. Under influence of hereditary factors, the environment and the changes of the climate the animals change into people. The main factor leading to this change is the characters start putting in the work.. Every day they do something to survive the fight with other animals, provide food, or adapt to nature. The paper examines the novels as an illustration of Darwin`s theory about the origin of species.