Adaptation of prose pieces in the folk literature into screenplays and their transfer to electronic culture environment

This study has scrutinized how prose pieces in the folk literature—particularly folk stories—have being sustained via literary adaptations and their transfer to electronic culture environment (i.e., cinema and television). With this regard, definitions and features of myths, tales, legends, epics, and folk stories as the prose genres in the folk literature were presented in the first chapter entitled "Introduction". A summary of the related studies on those prose genres was held, and the potential importance of folk stories in the scriptwriting process was pointed out. This chapter also provided general information on the script and scriptwriting. The second part of the current thesis concentrated on the rise of cinema—which is an application venue for scripts—as a technical field and as an art form. Then, the historical development of cinema in Turkey was examined from its beginning to the present day. In this analysis, Turkish cinema was pinpointed as encompassing many literary works in various forms and content since its very first years. Third part entitled "Literature and Cinema" presented a brief history of the literary adaptations, and then, put forwards the similarities and differences between literature and cinema. Subsequently, various definitions of and methods of the literary adaptation, reasons behind its practice, related processes, and its consequences were addressed. Fourth chapter focused on the different stages of scriptwriting in the first place. Relatedly, the issues such as the formation of the characters and of the conflict, dramatization, and dialogue writing were considered. Next, the oral, written, and electronic culture environments were introduced; and, the functional structure of different prose forms in those contexts were discussed. As the main interest of the current study, the characteristics of the folk stories, their classification, narrative elements in them, the venues where they are performed, and their adaptation into oral and electronic culture environment were examined in detail. The scriptwriting process and the storytelling tradition were compared in the last part of this chapter. The appropriateness of folk stories in being turned into screenplays was proposed in connection with certain reasons. The problems in relation to the transfer of environment, time, historicity, poetry, and music during the literary adaptation were considered, and, plausible solutions to them were proposed in the fifth section of our study. It was concluded that folk stories have commonly found place in various oral, written, and electronic culture environments, and they are highly suitable texts for being adapted into screenplays.