Марко Цепенков и генезата на македонската уметничка проза

Abstract

This paper is a synthesis of the author's naratological aпalysis of Maiko Cepenkov's fairy tales (in particular, "Dunja Guzeli and the king's son" and "Siljan the Stork") aпd demonic (vampire) stories. The research shows that these paradigmatic tales have visible deflection from the eaditional folk tale in several respects, which reveals how the genre evolved by approaching lie standards of artistic prose. ln the narrative composition of his fairy tales, by multiplying the narators and mixing genres he cteated masterfully complex nairative structures (siories within stories, chains of stories) that are typical of the novelistic and adventure prose genres. in the content of these fairly tales, he made attempts to individualize the main characters by adding modem Romanticist themes, psychological character traits, and internal character transformation. Likewise, he had an exceptional mastery of language, style, and narration to create а unique linguistic and aesthetic experience equal to аn author's fairy tale. ln his demonic (vampire) siories, despite the schematic narative composition, he used unusual interferences between the realistic and the fantastic codes that show the inception and evolution of the Macedonian fantastic story. For instanсе, the division of the focalizer (the witness of the surreal event) and the narator (the one who only writes down the story of the witness) into separate characters allowed the author to switch between immersing into the fantastic code with full belief, while still retaining the possibility for а didactic and pedagogic commentary from the narator. In Macedonian folkloristics, Cepenkov is considered an ‘atypical’ folklore collector due to his artistic habit of creative development and stylistic embellishment of the folk tales he collected (usually by hearing them from someone and later writing them down himself with deliberate stylization and comments). However, the research proves that, due io the same reasons, Cepenkov's naratives have crucial significance for the genesis of Macedonian artistic prose production and its evolution alongside the contemporaneous South Slavic and European literary currents.