Les motifs du chant populaire Le Dîner du prince dans la pièce de Ljubomir Simović La Bataille de Kosovo

Abstract

After having evoked the importance of the battle of Kosovo, an historical event which became legendary and mythical thanks to Serbian medieval literature, epic folk songs, and oral tradition, the author analyses The Prince’s Dinner (the third of the Fragments of Various Songs of Kosovo) and its characters, the Christian dimension of the song and the thesis that it is representative of a battle between old and new faiths. Subsequently examined is the drama by Ljubomir Simović (particularly the prince’s dinner scene), written in 1988 for the 600th anniversary of the battle of Kosovo, and its second version published fourteen years later. For all its literary qualities, Simović’s The Battle of Kosovo failed to escape the influences of the time when it was created: Simović wrote a play corresponding to the horizon of the expectations of his readers, eager for a revitalization of the national mythology.