Abstract:

Ayla Kutlu is one of the prominent writers of Turkish Literature after 1980. She does not accept being called “woman writer” but “a woman among writers. The writer who begun her writing carreer as a novel writer also produced short stories with her first short story book, Hüsnüyusuf Güzellemesi in 1984. This story is followed by Sen de Gitme Triyandafilis (1990), Mekruh Kadınlar Mezarlığı (1995) ve Zehir Zıkkım Hikayeler (2001). In her stories, Kutlu mostly deals with the problems of sad, sorrowful and angry women. These women are oppressed, humiliated, sexually abused victim of rude mentality or war time. While mentioning about these problems, these women represent unusual in the system. The author presents these women with contradiction in functional settings in every aspect and places a particular importance on the use of setting. The outstanding settings in the stories are İskenderun and around settings. Besides being the birth place of the author, the reason for choosing there is that the harshness of war has been deeply felt in İskenderun with its cosmopolitan structure. The stories taken place in İskenderun are mostly about war times. Thus, İskenderun alone has a functionality. The author who also uses places out of İskenderun presents settings shaped by the psychology of story characters. In some of Ayla Kutlu’s stories the settings stands out with their symbolic values. This study aims at investigating the settings used in the stories by Ayla Kutlu, who places a particular importance to the use of the settings. These settings are going to be dealt with and discussed in terms of close and open settings classification.

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