Performance Time in the Epic Songs of Vuk’s Singer Savo Matović Martinović

Folkloristics 8/1-2 (2023):
Author: Bojan Rajević
Text:
https://doi.org/10.18485/folk.2023.8.1_2.2

Savo Matov Martinović was the most prolific Vuk’s singer, unique also because he signed his songs and published them under his own name. The paper analyzes the ways in which his epic songs’ performance time functions in various positions (initial, medial, final) and examines how it is conceptualized in Martinović’s epic songs. Structural elements have been singled out and the functions which they have regarding the elements of an epic sujet, performance context, and cultural model they belong to have been analyzed. It is concluded that one of the more prominent performance time functions in these songs is the value system confirmation of the culture in which the songs are created by means of the mythologization of certain behavioral patterns linked to heroism, state and fatherland defense. This function encompasses the texts of Savo Matov Martinović’s songs, at every level; thus, the mythologization process covers both the heroes‒battle participants (including the singer who is also a hero in some of his songs) and the spaces within which the battles take place (Vis, Duga spomenita). The dominant formulas in the singer’s address (blessings and curses) conform to this function.

Keywords: Savo Matov Martinović, folk epics, performance time, cultural memory.