The Lyric Spaces of the Ottoman Empire

Abstract

Using the example of the lyrical collections of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (SNP I; SNP V; SNPr I), the paper examines how the spaces of the Ottoman Empire participated in shaping the space of oral lyrics. In other words, to what extent the singer recognizes or does not recognize the geopolitical nature of spaces, named and unnamed (in this case, specifically, their belonging to the Ottoman Empire); how much does belonging/non-belonging affect the shaping of space and the position of man in it; how space is experienced in the light of archaic binary oppositions: own – someone else’s; close – remote; human – demonic, but also how these general binary oppositions are concretized and historicized in the poem, especially in the border zones of the Empire and in historically critical times. Subject to analysis were also personal micro spaces marked by belonging to an oriental way of life or by names and titles, which implicitly testify to the presence of the Ottoman Empire and its influence on the life and living spaces of the Christian population. Furthermore, by analysing concrete textual material, we examined the extent of the influence of historical and cultural experience on the shaping of space in oral poetry, as well as the extent and way in which the spatial code illuminates the connections and contacts of the Muslim and non-Muslim population in their complex ambivalence. It has been shown that in these poems, the basic spaces are one’s own, close spaces, those in which the history of an individual’s private life takes place, or the space of the desired body and that this logic is often inexorably transferred to historically marked spaces and their function.