White City: The Origin of Epic Formula and Slavic Toponym

The study White City: The Origin of Epic Formula and Slavic Toponym co-authored by Mirjana Detelic and Marija Ilic has recently been published by the Institute for Balkan Studies (Special editions No 93, 2006, 249 pages). The study offers a folkloristic and linguistic analysis of the syntagm white city as a topos occurring in Serbian, Croatian and Muslim epic poetry and also as one of the oldest Slavic toponyms. The analysis has led the authors to assume that only the toponym is common Slavic and proto-Slavic, whereas the epic formula is specifically South Slavic. They argue for the originally sacral meaning of this proto-Slavic syntagm which, with Slavic migrations and settlement in the south of Europe, became profane and turned into a mere epic topos.