A Memorial Dimension of the Old Serbian Culture

Abstract

In the article, the problem of memorial dimension of Old Serbian culture, including its commemorative function related to the processes of heroisation and sacralisation, is discussed. The cultural model in question is analysed from the perspective of memory discourse, and due to categories of places and figures of memory. The specificity of this cultural system has been explored in the context of uniqueness, durability, and traditionalism. The literary, iconographic, and architectural exemplifications, evoked in the article, which are to testify mytho- and mnemonic-motoric ability of Old Serbian culture, are merely a modest representation of this phenomenon along with its memorial multidimensionality. The outlined frames and categories of interpretation of Old Serbian culture, indicated planes of the memorial reflections, and also disclosed mediatisation strategies only make up a certain orientation assessment of the character of this old cultural system. The memorial dimension of Old Serbian culture has been defined on several structural planes, and among their most important elements are: an original and highly coherent cultural model, literary genetics adopted on native ground, typology of iconographic and architectural realisations, and also a semantic prospectus manifested in all these works by an almost permanent repertoire of ideas, motifs, figures, representation schemes, and imago-logical constructions. The elements in question constitute a network of meanings which is revealed, expressed, constantly updated, and possibly supplemented in order to immortalise hyperbolically the fate of the State, Church, community. In spite of its generality, understood from the view-point of the paper”s limits, the presented thought is related to the conceptual paths typical for so-called memory studies which allows the authoress to uncover some possibilities of viewing and description, and possibly enrich the research apparatus used in the exploration of traditional and ancient cultures. This general, quite naturally, article on the memorial character of Old Serbian culture has been conceived as encouragement for further in-depth research in this area, and projected as a specific inducement to take broadly understood Slavonic studies as part of the cultural memory.