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Themes of the Young Hero in Serbocroatian Oral Epic Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

David E. Bynum
David E. Bynum*
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
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Abstract

Novice heroes in modern Serbocroatian oral epic tradition present the same scholarly problems as does Telemachus in Homer's Odyssey. In this Balkan narrative tradition, only a small number of epics has been recorded in which the novices and their stories are the main substance. The Yugoslav singer Avdo Međedović performed one of these by dictation for Milman Parry in Bijelo Polje, Yugoslavia, in 1935: The Marriage of Mehmed, Son of Smailaga. That song of 12,311 verses is one of the two longest epics recorded from Serbocroatian tradition. By thematic analysis of it and eight other Serbocroatian epics of initiation representing the full range of the initiation story's multiformity, we can establish that Avdo's epic song is an orthodox telling of the traditional story in spite of its extraordinary, Homeric size, and that both the ancient Greek legends of Theseus (in Plutarch and Apollodorus) and Homer's story of Telemachus are thematically indistinguishable from it. The content of a common Balkan mythic tradition underlying the ancient Greek and modern Serbocroatian stories can be described, and the traditional correctness of Telemachus' presence in the Odyssey can be explained from Yugoslav tellings of the Telemachia.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 83 , Issue 5 , October 1968 , pp. 1296 - 1303
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1968

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References

1. The words multiform and multiformity are used in the technical sense they have in the Oral Theory; for statements of that sense see Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), pp. 100–138.

2. The name Mujo is a formation on the familiar South Slavic hypocoristic pattern of disyllabic names with vocatives in -o, and is derived from the first two syllables of the Arabic name Muhammed by the Serbocroatian dialectal change h > j. Other forms of the same name, e.g., Hamdo, have been produced on the same hypocoristic pattern, but they are not widespread in the epic tradition. The derivation of Mujo from Mustafa is an infrequently encountered folk etymology and a lexicographic mistake unknown to the Moslem epic tradition, where the distinction between the two stock heroes Mujo Hrnjica and Mustajbeg Lika is among the best remembered facts of heroic legend.

The Arabic name Muhammed came to the Balkans through Turkish, which also contributed to South Slavic its own form of the name, Mehmed. It too underwent naturalization into Slavic, which yielded the forms Meho, Mejo, and the augmentatives Mesina and Mesa. These Slavic forms predominate as the names of neophyte heroes in the Balkan Moslem oral epic tradition. It therefore appears that the Moslem initiatory heroes, like several Sultans of the Turkish Empire, are namesakes of the Prophet. That fact reveals the possibility of a former religious and political connection between the initiatory pattern of narrative in the epic tradition and the coming of Islam to the Balkans, a connection perhaps analogous to the many attested displacements of pagan European legendary or mythic persons by Christian saints.

3. There are, however, many more epic tales which contain accounts of novices as framed stories or as mere episodes of little apparent relevance to the narratives embracing them. See, e.g., No. 18 in Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord, Serbocroatian Heroic Songs (Cambridge and Belgrade, 1954) (“Hasan of Ribnik Rescues Mustajbeg”).

4. Parry text No. 6840, “Ženidba Hadži Smailagina sina,” Bijelo Polje, 1935.

5. The other is in Parry texts Nos. 12389 and 12441, “Osmanbeg Delibegović i Pavičević Luka.”

6. Parry texts Nos. 12445, 12450, and 12457.

7. Friedrich Krauss, Smailagic Meho (Dubrovnik, 1886).

8. Text No. 527, “Zenidba Ćustović Omera,” recorded from Ćamil Kulenović, Kulen Vakuf, 1934; text No. 549, “Smailagić Meho,” recorded from Hasan Kajimović, Kalinovik, 1934; text No. 1956, “Sila Osmanbeg ženi sina Mehmedbega,” recorded from Murat Žunić, Bihać, 1935; text No. 12460, “Ženidba Šahinpašica Meha,” dictated by Mumin Vlahovljak, Bijelo Polje, 1935.

9. Narodne pjesne M nhamedovaca u Bosni i Hercegovini, Vols. I-II (Sarajevo, 1888–89) : songs xxxix (from Konjic) “Omer Hrnjicin izbavlja svog oca buljuk-ba?u Muja i trideset suianja,” and XL (from Sarajevo) “Hrnjicić Omerica,”

10. See n. 7.

11. Avdo's performance includes about the same number of verses as the sum of the other eight texts, which vary in length from 57 to over 2,000 verses.

12. See the discussion of Yugoslav epic composition in Lord, The Singer of Tales, pp. 30–98.

13. I would not tax patience with a full demonstration of thematic analysis for each of the nine Serbocroatian texts. Declaration of the technique was important for the present purpose, rather than the process of its application, which would occupy as much space again as this paper now does.

14. See my article, “Kult dvaju junaka u kulturnoj istoriji Balkana,” in Anali filološkog fakulteta 4, Vukov zbornik I (Beograd, 1964), pp. 65–73.

15. Plutarch, Lives: “Theseus.” Apollodorus, Library, iii, xvi.

16. Here “T” is Telemachus, “Th,” Theseus.