BUT, HERE COMES LJUTICA BOGDAN. History and tradition in interpretations of a biography

Text topic: FOLKLORE TRADITIONS

Text author: Snežana D. Samardžija

Among the songs from Vuk's collections, Ljutica Bogdan is best known as an opponent of Kralljević Marko. However, multiple lyrical-epic adaptations of international motives are connected to his name and family relations. In addition, older generations of scholars of Serbian oral poetry have sought to recognize the historical background from which Bogdan's character developed. On this occasion, a review of such approaches was presented. After the literary-historical synthesis, poems about Ljutica Bogdan were analyzed (older records, Vuk's corpus, material printed during the 19th century). The types of characterizations, conditioned by the poetics of the genre and the archaic layers of the Serbian tradition, which could give impulses for the construction of this poetic biography, are pointed out in this paper.