Gaziantep Masallarinda Şamanizmin İzleri
Signs of Shamanism in Gaziantep Folk Tales

Summary/Abstract: Studies on the origins of folk tales, their motive characteristics, cataloging, and their relationship with other genres have been going on for about 200 years. Academical studies that are carried out in Turkey are mostly about the completion of the material, determining its motives or doing its structural analysis. In recent years, there has been a growing interest about the mythological and cultural characteristics of folk tales and their relationship with resources of Turkish culture. There is a certain literature on Shamanism in Turkey-even if its limited- however, there are Ms publications on Shamanism besides one or two MA thesis and a few articles that are about Shamanistic elements in folk tales. In this study, which is about Shamanism, we analyzed the environment that folk tales create and the elements they borrowed from Shamanism. We found out that the only functions of folk tale passages was not being a form of narration; but that the Shamanistic world view continue to exist as motifs in folk tales: Shaman’s travels in different worlds during the ritual, getting information and aid from spirits, ant the concept of a layered universe in Shamanism are all similar elements that are encountened in Gaziantep folk tales. In the conclusion part we especially stressed the wealth of Turkish folk tales from this aspect.

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