MODERNLEŞTİRMENİN EROTİK TOPRAKLARINDA BİR HALK HİKÂYESİNİN GELENEKSEL KADIN KAHRAMANI: SUNA.

Suna ile Çoban Hikâyesi (The Story of Suna and the Shepherd) written by MP Besim Atalay was awarded first place in a contest held by the Directorate-General of Press for literary works that would modernize folk books. In this article, the story is considered as fakelore using the tradition of folk tales in line with the request of the Directorate-General of Press to reinforce the "national upbringing" of the folk living in villages and towns by providing them reading material. What does the women's issues in this text tell us about the function of such reproduction of tradition? As mentioned in some theories of nationalism focusing on women's issues, nationalists have usually compared the nation to the family and have therefore considered men as the protectors of the family and the nation, and women praised for being mothers as the namus (honor) of the family and the nation. As a result of this nation-as-family metaphor, love of country in Suna ile Çoban Hikâyesi bears the image of the country as a woman's body and hence implies eroticization of the land. The traditional role thus given to women in Besim Atalay's work of fakelore shows the reinforcements with respect to the extent of modernization in the Republican Period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]