The Role of the Bosnian Oral Ballad in the Affirmation of Collective Historical Memory

Abstract

Although the nature of the ballad is not inherent to deal with the so-called historical events and historical figures, we can see from some examples that this oral literary genre is not unfamiliar with topics based on real people and true events, and even those of wider social significance. The Bosniak oral ballads discussed in this paper, show that the so-called historical ballads do not fundamentally betray history, although they reshape and poetically upgrade it in detail, following the poetic requirements of the genre to which they belong. Ballads about the Morić brothers and the death of Hifzi-beg Đumišić can provide a basis for claiming that the Bosniak historical ballad is, in fact, a medium of collective historical memory and that it sometimes chronically and surprisingly accurately remembered the circumstances of the actual events of wider socio-historical importance.