Özet:

Ignácz Kúnos (1860-1945) was a Hungarian-born linguist and Turkologist. He became an important figure in the Anatolian folklore tradition as he was one of the pioneers who compiled the Turkish fairy tales. He traveled throughout the Ottoman Empire between 1885 and 1890 and listened to many storytellers in the Ottoman society. Thanks to his efforts, with his research on Anatolian folklore and ethnography, several volumes of Anatolian oral tradition have been preserved. Kúnos sought to find international elements and themes in the Turkish folk tradition by comparing them with their European counterparts and those in the East, such as in the Arabian Nights. He tried to examine Turkish tales in a Western orientalist perspective. The fairy tale collection The Forty Four Turkish Tales (1913) exemplifies this attempt. The stories that contain supernatural, monotheistic or polytheistic religious elements include heroes, villains, helpers, sorcerers and witches which resembles European fairy tales thematically. In this article, “Helvacı Güzeli” from Kúnos' fairy tale collection will be analyzed in comparison with another selected work from English folklore, “Molly Whuppie”. “Helvacı Güzeli” is an example of Anatolian fairy tale tradition, which also includes traditional figures from Anatolian culture such as vizier and hodja. Furthermore, “Molly Whuppie” is compiled in folklorist writer Joseph Jacobs’ book English Fairy Tales for the first time, and ever since it is added in many fairy tale collections. The main argument in this article is about the heroine and storyteller “Helvacı Güzeli” and “Molly Whuppie” are the trickster figures in the stories while defeating traditional male figures (teacher, vizier, giant etc.) who try to kill them. Thus, Helvacı Güzeli and Molly Whuppie gain strength while defeating their enemies by using tricks such as disguise and properly exposing the wrongs they have experienced.

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