Kosovo’s mythic centrality was imposed by nationalists, not present in the folk canon
Evidence
Despite Karadzic’s public pronouncements on its importance, Kosovo plays a relatively minor role in the poems he collected. The portrayal of Lazar as a Christ figure, Kosovo as a Serb Golgotha, and Muslims as the evil brood of “cursed Hagar” was to be found in sermons and chronicles.” However, the Kosovo legend, as a story that would fix Slavic Muslims as Christ killers and race traitors, was still not fully realized. — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 140
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: The Kosovo-as-holy-land discourse is a modern nationalist invention, not ancient tradition — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 1465
Related
- Kosovo mythology transforms religious identity into a racialist ideology (similarity 0.86)
- The Kosovo-as-holy-land discourse is a modern nationalist invention, not ancient tradition (similarity 0.84)
- Pre-nationalist Serb epic prized a mediator with the Ottomans, not the Kosovo martyr (similarity 0.84)
- Serb religious nationalism mapped the Kosovo myth onto the Passion narrative (similarity 0.84)
- A retrieved Serbian tradition could recast Kosovo’s traitor as the genocidaires themselves (similarity 0.82)
- The Kosovo myth of ancient Serb-Muslim enmity is a recent nineteenth-century construction (similarity 0.81)
- The 1989 Kosovo commemoration fused Christ-killer myth with anti-Muslim and anti-Albanian hatred (similarity 0.80)
- The Serbian-Jerusalem discourse is a product of 1980s Serb nationalism, not ancient tradition (similarity 0.79)