Serbian medieval poetry: 20th-century literary-historical and theoretical interpretations

This paper examines how national literary histories written in the twentieth century define medieval Serbian poetry. Grounded canon of Byzantine liturgical poetry and dedicated to cult practice, hymnography often did not conform modern poetic principles, originality, metrical form. Formalist approaches shaped anthologies literature published Yugoslavia 1960s. The editors transformed sequences from narrative prose into texts, thus creating poems. These cases draw attention importance textual criticism social context defining genres. Exploring as a linguistic event - poem sung an engaged audience introduces new perspectives on its interpretation.