To Honour the Female: The Gendering of the South Slavic Epic Tradition

The present paper explores variations of the motif of the wife's betrayal in the South Slavic oral tradition and how and why it got connected with a historical event--the fall of a feudal ruler in the Rhodope region in the fourteenth century. The gender aspect is underlined when variants of this motif are analysed from the point of view of the singer--male or female.