Visualising an Oral Epic

Lobacev’s Comic Book Tsar Dusan’s Wedding

Abstract

This study analyses visual and verbal material found in Dorde Lobacev’s comic book Tsar Dusan’s Wedding (orig. Zenidba Cara Dusana [1989]) using a set of tools coming from the domains of intersemiotic translation, intermediality, and adaptation. The comic book is based on the Serbian oral epic ballad Dusan’s Wedding (orig. Zenidba Dusanova [1815/1975]), which focuses on the hero wedding theme. The study will try to present verbal and graphic devices used to transfer the epic narrative to the medium of comics and compare them to the ones used in the original story. It will also address the aspect of the epic ballad structure and its transposition into the realm of comics. The analysis will take into account the historical context of the comic book in question and compare the findings with some of the results of contemporary comics studies dealing with certain graphic devices employed in comics. These findings reveal that Lobacev’s comic book contains certain graphic flourishes related to describing motion, speed and spatiality, but lacks the ones used to depict affect, which is in line with basic traits of oral epic poetry.