Gender roles in folk stories collected from Âşık Şevki Halıcı

Folk tales give very important data about the mentality, traditions and customs, life and culture of the society in which they are formed. For this reason, folk tales are important literary sources in order to understand and examine the basic dynamics and sociological structure of the society in which they are produced. The examination of the concept of gender in literary works has generally been shaped through women. Men and masculinity forms are gradually becoming the subject of research. However, gender roles of men and women affect each other and cannot be considered independently of each other. The language used in the narratives it also gives clues about gender. For this reason, we found it more useful to examine the gender roles of men and women together in our study. We preferred to evaluate this in the context of folk tales through the tradition of minstrelsy. Folk tales are very important works for gender studies in terms of understanding the thought and cultural structure of the society. In the study, the stories compiled from Âşık Şevki Halıcı are discussed in the context of gender. Considering the characteristics of the time and place told in the stories, the profiles of men and women reflected in the folk tales were examined with their gender roles, and a gender questioning was made in terms of the language used in the stories. Within the scope of this thesis, it is aimed to reveal how the gender roles of men and women in the society are handled in the folk tales compiled from Âşık Şevki Halıcı, and to evaluate the language used in the stories in the context of gender. As a result, the prominent factor in gender studies, especially in folk tales, which have an important place in traditional narrative genres, women have often been pushed into the background with their patriarchal traces in the stories. Traces of patriarchal mentality are prominent in the narratives. Women have also supported the continuation of the patriarchal order, knowingly or unknowingly, mostly with the teachings of the society. Although women are an entity that is sought after especially as a lover, in this case, it comes to the fore that women are seen as a sexual object. The language used in the narratives also states that women are pushed into the background against men and that women are dependent on men. Keywords: Âşık Şevki Halıcı, Folk Story, masculinity-masculinity, woman, feminism, gender.