101 Traces Of Disasters In Anatolian Legend

Abstract

Legends, defined by researchers in various ways and having an important place among folk narratives, have survived to the present day by preserving their vitality through oral culture by being stored in social memory. Traces of natural disasters, like all issues that deeply affect society, can be seen in legends that are generally told about people, places and events and contain extraordinary motifs. In this research, in order to determine how the phenomenon of disaster takes place in Anatolian legends, Prof. Dr. Saim Sakaoğlu's work titled 101 Anatolian Legends was taken as a sample and the legends in this work were examined using the document analysis method, one of the qualitative research methods. Thirteen legends related to disasters have been identified. While ten of the detected ones contain a single disaster motif, three of them contain more than one disaster motif. The legends containing the disaster theme in the examined work were classified thematically. Legends containing more than one disaster motif (such as both earthquake and flood) were examined separately for each motif. The traces of disasters and the reasons for their formation according to legends were explained with the examples identified from the legends in question, and some functions of the legend type determined by folk literature researchers were determined based on these examples.