THE ORIGIN OF THE EPIC HERO AND ORIGIN-RELATED FEATURES

Abstract

Numerous international motifs which we recognize in the characters of King Arthur and Prince Marco were acquired through history by various nations which modelled them and gave them new forms and quality. Given that Prince Marco and King Arthur are the paragons of universal ethical principles in south-slavic and anglo-saxon epic and literature, they have aptly held the prominent place in cultural, literature and artistic contexts of different nations throughout history. Although heroic and other knightly traits of Prince Marco and King Arthur are locus communis of their characters, no comparative studies on their mutual heroic qualities have been conducted in Serbian literature so far. Since the thematic and narrative postulates of the heroic biography includes a wide scope of motifs and topics, this paper aims to present the heroic origin of Prince Marco and King Arthur as the initial feature of their heroic biographies which governs other heroic traits. As the nature of origin of a hero has a vital impact on the origin of the hero’s strength and his weapons, the objective of this paper was to demonsrate the degree of overlapping of the origin-induced heroic traits in epic biografies of Prince Marco and King Arthur.