INTERŽANROVSKA PROHODNOST VARIJANATA USMENE LIRSKE PESME: NA PRIMERU PESAMA „PRANjE BEZ VODE I BEZ SAPUNAˮ I „NAJBOLjE MJESTO ZA SELOˮ

Abstract

The paper examines the process of de-ritualisation of variants of two lyric oral poems, which were not classified as ritual in Serbian oral poetry collections of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić. The aim of the paper is to show how the poems changed from ritual to love and erotic ones, and to identify their intergenre characteristics. The analysis has shown that although the two variants differ according to the presence of love and erotic motifs, they have certain common features of genre restructuring. On the basis of the fertility cult, manifested in traditional spring and summer rites, variants of poems would lose their ritual context and become susceptible to introducing love motifs and changing traditional poetic images whose meanings would be interpreted in the new context. Dif- ferent layers of variants, no matter how old they were, become complementary through aestheticization. Therefore, in both poems, there is no discordance in the middle verses as would be expected in the initial phase of de-ritualisation, which is the indication of an advanced stage of the transition of variants into the genre of love poetry.