BEAUTY, SWORD AND PRAYER: OLD-TESTAMENT WIDOW FROM BETHULIA PORTRAYED IN WORKS OF MARKO MARULIĆ AND GAVRILO KOVAČEVIĆ

Abstract

This study presents results of a comparative analysis of two religious epics authored by Marko Marulić (1450-1524) and Gavrilo Kovačević (1765-1832) respectively. Their respective works are somewhat equally inspired by the Biblical story of Judith, the widow from Bethulia (Marulić 1521; Kovačević 1808). Looking from the contemporary literary-historical and cultural point of view, the manner in which the Old Testament story was remodelled in the works of the two South Slavic poets confirms the veracity  of the modern theoretical presumption about the impact of ancient myths onto the creation of national-imagotypical systems (Fischer, 2009). More precisely, pseudo-factographic “merging“ of key events from the history of various Near East empires (Babylon, Assyria and even Ottoman Empire) justified for exaggerating about the magnanimity of the military power of infidels, who were triumphantly won over by a small in number, but pious people. In the initial phase of this research special attention was paid to the interpretation of intertextual relations between the deuterocanonical story and religious epics of the two authors whose works have not been ever, up to now, studied through comparative analysis. This comparative approach to the subject of the research provided more precise identification of common touching elements between respective poetical works of Marko Marulić and Gavrilo Kovačević (genre-wise, poetics-wise and topic-wise).