МОТИВ ПРОСАЦА И ТЕШКИХ ЗАДАТАКА - СРПСКЕ И ЈАПАНСКЕ ВАРИЈАНТЕ
THE SUITORS AND DIFFICULT TASKS MOTIF IN SERBIAN AND JAPANESE VARIANTS

Summary/Abstract: This paper deals with an international motif of difficult tasks, which could be found in traditions and national literatures all over the world. It appears in different forms of prose literature, and its functions are caused by genre distinctions. A kind of the motif could also be the presenting the suitors with difficult tasks. The Japanese and Serbian folk tales with stylized motif have certain common characteristics. The tasks are necessary test of suitors’ cleverness and resourcefulness. They are assigned to suitors in order to find out which one is right for the bride. As a rule, a fairy tale structure needs a happy ending. Due to that, one of the suitors must succeed. However, in classical Japanese literature there is a unique work, the progenitor of the monogatari genre - The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. The central part of the oldest fantastic story in Japan rests on the motif of the suitors and unsolvable tasks. The heroine, a supernatural being, provides the tasks that undoubtedly cannot be done. It is because she doesn’t want any of the suitors to succeed. She remains unmarried, and went back to her actual home, the Moon. Another characteristic of the work is a fact that the suitors’ characters were based on historical persons, which also makes The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter more distant from the folk tale.

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