Destiny of a beautiful foreigner in the universe of Banjane: Character of Sarah in a novel by Petar Sarić

Abstract

The subject of the analysis is the character of Sarah in the novel of the same name by Petar Sarić, focusing on her strangeness and fatal beauty, inseparable from her beautiful soul. The character of a foreign woman in the patriarchal community of Banjane invokes other fatal foreigners in Serbian literature, and throughout the research seeks to place Sarić's heroine in the wider context of female characters of Serbian prose. The elements of the erotic in her character are in contact with the sacred, and in examining her influence on others as particularly significant, the experience of the numinous emerges. The aim of the paper is to examine how Sarah's character goes beyond the usual features of female characters in patriarchal settings, and at what moments she remains within the given limits. Based on this, research tries to give Sarah's specific characteristics which make her one of the most complex characters in Sarić's prose.

Keywords

• stranger
• fatal beauty
• numinous
• erotic
• sacred
• patriarchy
• tradition