Il vino nell'epica popolare serba tra formula e simbolo

Wine is a recurring element in Serbian epic poetry, where it may be considered either an epic formula without stylistic significance, or symbolically imbued with rhetorical, mythological, and religious connotations. Scholars have broadly interpreted the well-known formula of “vino pije” [wine drinks] followed by the hero’s name. Some assign it a mere metric or narrative functionality, responding to the need to complete the syllables in a verse or to introduce epic characters (Parry and Lord), while others see within it the image of an entire people (Cronia). Wine has a well-defined function in the epic songs of the Kosovo cycle, where it first announces the martyrdom of the heroes of the Kosovo polje in the Eucharist that precedes the battle, spiritually uniting the army, and later emphasized through a second “Eucharist” offered by a Kosovo maiden to wounded warriors. The ruby-red color of wine becomes confused with the field soaked in the soldiers’ blood, establishing chromatic parallels between the martyrs of Kosovo and the sacrifice of Christ. The paper deals with various epithets used to describe wine in Serbian epic poetry and, in particular, with the problematic etymology of the adjective rujan.