Representations of women in the miscellanea titled Kitāb-ı Hikāyāt

Abstract

Scholarly interest in prose stories has been gaining momentum, and this master’s thesis aims to contribute to this growing area of scholarship. I decided to study a story miscellanea titled Kitāb-ı Hikāyāt in my master’s thesis and analyze the stories in the manuscript by focusing on gender and particularly the representations of women. This study consists of four parts. The first chapter, “The Universe of Prose Stories,” introduces the genre of prose stories based on the previous studies and reveals its characteristics by taking this miscellanea as an example. Then, it presents the aim and scope of this thesis by reviewing the research on prose stories and the studies approaching it with gender analysis. The second part, “The Universe of Manuscripts,” introduces the manuscript titled Kitāb-ı Hikāyāt. Afterward, it discusses its intertextuality with other manuscripts by pointing out available versions. Lastly, it presents stories’ summaries in this miscellanea. The third chapter, “The Universe of Women in Prose Stories,” discusses various representations of women in the narratives. It also questions the effects of age, social class, economic status, sexuality, etc. on womanhood. The fourth and final chapter includes the transcription of the first seven stories that form the backbone of the analyses. This M.A. thesis aims to contribute to the studies of Ottoman literature and gender studies by introducing prose stories and offering an analytical reading through a gender lens. It also seeks to increase the visibility of prose stories in academia.