SAVA NEMANJIC ABOUT HIMSELF. AN EXAMPLE OF DESIGN OF AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL DISCOURSE IN SERBIAN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE

Abstract

The autobiographical discourse in Sava Nemanjic’s The Life of Simeon Nemanja is shaped in different ways and according to different models, leaving us enough room to ask ourselves: What does Sava Nemanjic really say about himself in The Life of Simeon Nemanja? Why does he mention himself, in what context, and what function does his autobiographical statement have? Sava’s autobiographical statement illustrates two basic models of autobiographical discourse that exist in the Middle Ages: the hagiographic and the confessional, which is most noticeable in the Sava’s autobiographical note in the "wobble" between the third and the first person singular. This "equilibrium" of the autobiographical and biographical principle is evident in The Life of Simeon Nemanja and stems from the essentially same function of autobiographical and biographical texts: their purpose is to deter mortals from sin. The biographical and autobiographical approach to life, in medieval literature, is, in principle, balanced by the non-differentiation of the "method" of getting to know themselves and getting to know each other, which ultimately results in frequent "borrowing" of biographical narrative patterns in autobiographical texts. The function of the autobiographical statement in The Life of Simeon Nemanja was not the fact that the writer expresses "oneself," but acts on the other. Self-confirmation, in particular, that formed in a meaningful sense, therefore had a didactic function; it depicted a life that should be understood in symbolic or allegory sense, and only such a life can be a model for stimulation.