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005    20230125123759.0
008    140829s2014    xx |||||||||||||| ||eng d
020    9781321022360
035    (UMI)AAI3627116
035    AAI3627116
035    (NjP)8745153-princetondb
035    (OCoLC)ocn894362236
035     |z(NjP)Voyager8745153
040    UMI |cUMI |dNjP
100 1  Sayers, David Selim.
245 14 The wiles of women in Ottoman and Azeri texts.
300    ix, 186 p.
500    Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 75-10(E), Section: A.
502     |bPh.D. |cPrinceton University |d2014
520    The wiles of women are a literary theme that has been treated from ancient Egyptian narratives to twenty-first-century TV series. The theme reached its greatest flowering in literatures of the Islamicate world, beginning with Surat Yusuf of the Qur'an and inspiring entire literary traditions in Arabic (Kayd al-Nisa'), Persian (Makr-e Zan[an]), and Turkish (Mekr-i Zenan). While some scholarly work exists on the Arabic and Persian traditions, the Turkish tradition has not received significant scholarly attention to date. The present study aims to fill this gap. In so doing, the study presents, transliterates, and translates into English seventeen hitherto-unexamined prose stories on the wiles of women in Ottoman and Azeri Turkish. The first part of the study establishes a morphology for the stories and proposes a definition of the literary genre they represent. Both the morphology and the genre definition are designed to accommodate future additions to the corpus. The second part of the study engages in an in-depth analysis of the genre's treatment of the wiles-of-women theme, extrapolating a broader worldview from this treatment.
520    The proposed morphology divides the genre into three main categories which present a wide spectrum on the treatment of the theme. For instance, stories may view the wiles of women as evil and dangerous; as frivolous and amusing; or as thoughtful and instructive. Still, the categories all share the a priori assumption that women are intrinsically and incorrigibly guileful. The same does not hold for men, whom the stories grant moral agency and the capacity to learn from their mistakes. Story arcs in Mekr-i Zenan often feature men falling for the wiles of women, suffering as a result, and learning a lesson in the end. Women, in contrast, showcase no personal development. What emerges is a view of the world as a moral testing ground for men, and of women as a divinely ordained obstacle/mediator between men and a morally upright life. Nevertheless, many Mekr-i Zenan stories employ humor and ambiguity, for instance by casting men in the guileful role, to enable a more nuanced view of social and gender relations than generic conventions suggest.
500    Hanioglu, M. Sukru, advisor
500    Finn, Robert P., committee member
500    Cook, Michael A., committee member
500    Marmon, Shaun, committee member
500    Peirce, Leslie P., committee member
710 2  Princeton University. |bDepartment of Near Eastern Studies. |0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/nr89005579
773 0   |tDissertation Abstracts International |g75-10A(E).
856 40  |uhttp://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01dj52w4846
902    st16 |bm |6a |7m |dv |f1 |e20141028
914    (OCoLC)ocn894362236 |bOCoLC |cmatch |d20230125 |eprocessed |f894362236