From the Classical Serbian Epics to the Hague Thematic Circle and Back: Decasyllabic Singing as a Linguistic Register Seen from the Functional Perspective

Abstract

Contemporary singing to the gusle and the new decasyllabic songs made in the style of the Serbian “classical epics” ‒ which both gained in public visibility with the break-up of Yugoslavia ‒ is a phenomenon which calls for scholars’ attention. Until recently, the interest has been reduced to the attempts of explaining its sudden expansion by relating it to the rising nationalism and populism during the 1990s. This made some authors reduce the whole contemporary singing to the gusle to the instrument for promoting the warmongering and extreme-nationalist ideas. The disdain for these ideological and political standpoints was transferred not only to the “new” singing to the gusle, but to the gusle itself and their language ‒ which put some scholars in the situation to defend this instrument and the language of the epic genre from accusations of their “historical guilt” for the war during the nineties. This paper aims to show that the contemporary singing to the gusle ‒ at least among the Serbian population ‒ is a complex phenomenon (both from the thematic and functional points of view) and that the songs about the events and historical protagonists of the nineties are only one of its subtypes. Communication in epic decasyllables is discussed as one of the historically recorded registers of the Serbian language, which, as such, should not be the object of ethical evaluation since it does not imply any ethical value in its very form and structure.