Application of the Propp Method in Turkish Tales / Türk Masallarına Propp Metodunun Uygulanışı

Abstract

This paper was presented in 1973 at Turkey’s first International Folklore Seminar held by the Republic of Turkey, Ministry of Culture’s Folklore Department at the Turkish Historical Society and was published in 1974. In the endnote of the article, I explained why I felt the need to republish this statement after 50 years. The results I obtained in my doctoral thesis titled “Elazığ Tales and Propp Method” were limited to the fairy tales compiled from Elazığ. In this paper tales were compiled from various regions of Turkey and were examined according to the Propp method and the same results were reached. For the fairy tales examined in this paper, I added eight subclasses to the seven of the 31 functions that determine the structure in the Propp Method, which is very important in terms of showing the connection of the structure with the culture and its belief system. In addition, these additions show that the structure and the content have a balanced connection. Years ago, when indexed journals were non-existent, the most important criterion in academic dissertations and research was originality. In the 1990s, at the conference I gave at Indiana University was also a very crowded and interesting speech. The fact that my work has not yet been obsolete made me think that I needed to introduce it to the newer generations. In 1973, when I presented the paper, folklore studies were generally carried out by amateur folklorists. The content of the declaration caused great surprise and the mature folklorists who had a say at that time called me a “young storyteller”. In this paper, I present the report of that young storyteller to today’s young researchers. I kept the content of the paper as it is; however, I replaced the old usages with the newer Turkish usages that were renewed in 50 years.

Keywords

• propp
• turkish tales
• function