In "The Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature" on Harvard University out of 131 epic songs recorded from Milovan Vojicic, several are dedicated to
the popular theme of the Serbian and Balkan epic - the Kosovo Battle 1389
(Prince Lazar and Milos Obilic, The Defeat of Kosovo, ?he Kosovo Tragedy, The
Kosovo Field after the Battle, The Death of Mother Jugovici, The Death of
Pavle Orlovic at Kosovo, noted in 1933-34 in Nevesinje). The paper examines
Vojicic?s Kosovo songs from the perspective of textual, stylistic and
rhetoric criticism, poetics, and memory studies. An analysis of Milovan
Vojicic?s Kosovo epic poetry leaves an impression of an active singer who has
internalised tradition, and on this foundation composes new works in the
traditional manner and "in the folk style". Vojicic is a literate singer who
was familiar with the collections of Vuk Karadzic, Bogoljub Petranovic, the
Matica Hrvatska, and the songbooks of the time. He did not hesitate to remake
or rewrite songs from printed collections or periodicals, which means that
his understanding of authorship was in the traditional spirit. Vojicic?s
compilations lie on that delicate line between oral traditional and modern
literary poetry; he is, naturally, not alone in this double role - the
majority of the gusle-players who were his contemporaries could be similarly
described. In the body of Kosovo epic poetry Vojicic?s songs stand out (The
Death of Pavle Orlovic at Kosovo, The Kosovo Tragedy), where he abandons the
printed model and achieves the kind of originality which is in fact part of
tradition itself. Vojicic highly valued oral tradition and the opportunity to
perform it, as part of the process of creating an image of himself as a folk
gusle-player in modern terms. For this reason, his repertoire includes both
old and new themes. They are sung according to the epic standard, but also in
accordance with the modern standard of epic semi-literary works. In Vojicic?s
world, oral tradition is an important component in viewing the historical
past, and in perceiving reality and the singer?s place in it. The epic is a
form of oral memory and the guardian of remembrance of past events; however it also provides a space for surveying and commenting on modern historical
situations in a popularly accepted manner, at times in an ideological key, as
seen in songs which gather together major historical events. This perception
of the epic tradition and history is mirrored in the heterogeneity of the
corpus and in the repertoire of songs, and is all a consequence of vastly
changed conditions of origin, existence and acceptance, i.e. the consumption
of oral works in the first half of the 20th century, in a process of
interaction between literature and folklore.
The place of the symbolic city in construction of national imagery: A case of Balkan folklore - two models of epic city
