The Bone Motif and Lambs in the Turkish Folktale "The Reed Door"

Download

1179027.pdf

Date

2000

Author

Ruhi, S.

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

154
views

227
downloads

The Aarne-Thompson Tale Type 123, "The Wolf and the Kids," is present in Turkish folklore in a number of variants. This study examines an oral version of the tale in which the plot diverges from other variants. In the tale, the wolf threatens to eat the parents, while the offspring function as protectors of the household. Both parents and offspring are eaten by the wolf. This study analyzes the divergence and the significance of the lamb, the lamb's bones, and the door in the tale through a semantic comparison of these elements with their communicative value in Turkish folklore material and discourse. The underlying semantic coherence of these elements reveals that they represent children as protectors of the family. Based on the premise that narratives are forms of communication, the study argues that the main communicative value of the tale is its function as a metaphor for family patterns in Turkish culture, where children are perceived as being essential to the well-being of the family.

Subject Keywords

Cultural Studies, Visual Arts and Performing Arts, Anthropology, Bone motif, Comparative folktale discourse, Lamb, Tale Type 123 in Turkish folktales

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/50885

Journal

Asian Folklore Studies

DOI

https://doi.org/10.2307/1179027

Collections

Department of Foreign Language Education, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

The Three Estates Model: Represented and Satirised in Chaucer’s General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales Doğan, Sadenur (Karabuk University, 2013-7-2) This paper presents an investigation of the 'Three Estates Model' of the English medieval society in Chaucer's General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Based upon the descriptions and illustrations of the characters, it aims to explore the hierarchal structure of the medieval society which is divided into three main groups or 'estates': the ones who pray, the ones who rule and govern, and the ones who work. In the General Prologue, Chaucer gives a series of sketches of the characters that are the represent...
RUNS IN FOLKTALES AND THE DYNAMICS OF TURKISH RUNS - A CASE-STUDY Zeyrek Bozşahin, Deniz (1993-01-01) Runs are inherent to Turkish folktales, as they are to folktales of certain other cultures. They are traditionally accepted forms, and useful compositional devices that function as bridges between the world of the tale and the world of everyday reality. This study attempts to demonstrate the dynamics of runs through an examination of the stylistic techniques that narrators employ, showing in particular how surface morphology and syntax help narrators to encode the traditional function and the meaning of run...
The Vicissitudes of Folk Narratives in Republican Turkey: The "People," National Pedagogy, and Grotesque Laughter Erdoğan, Necmi (2015-01-01) The article examines the attempts to modernize folk narratives in Turkey, with a special emphasis on the ones characterized by grotesque imagery, including shadow theatre and Keloglan tales. During the 1930s, the early Republican regime launched a project aimed at employing folk narratives in the service of its Kemalist national pedagogy. This study argues that the transposition of humorous folk narratives was bound to fail because of the incongruity between the "cheerful folk word" and the "dismal official...
The Names of Seljuk's Sons as Evidence for the Pre-Islamic Religion of the Seljuks Dietrich, Richard (Brill, 2018-01-01) Although early sources for Seljuk history do not give specific information on the Seljuks' religious beliefs and practices before their conversion to Islam, the names of the sons of the dynasty's namesake - Mikail, Israil, Musa, Yunus, Yusuf - have long been a source of speculation on this subject. By comparing the names of Seljuk's sons with the naming practices of regional Muslim, Jewish and Christian elites in light of the religious context of Transoxiana up to the late tenth century, it is possible to r...
The making of world literature: Turkish fiction as a case study Yıldız Bağçe, Hülya (Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2019-12-01) This study is an investigation of the conditions and contexts of translated fiction, especially Turkish fiction, in international publishing and literary circles. Based on current discussions on what constitutes "world literature" and interviews conducted with cultural intermediaries in the transnational publishing world, this article focuses on the factors influencing the production, circulation, and reception processes of transnational fiction in the global literary field. These factors include the proces...

Citation Formats

S. Ruhi, “The Bone Motif and Lambs in the Turkish Folktale “The Reed Door”,” Asian Folklore Studies, 2000, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/50885.