Turkish Folklore and Oral Literature

Professor İlhan Başgöz has introduced Turkish folklore to a generation of American folklorists who neither read nor speak Turkish. He has taught us about the great ancient Turkish folk tradition as well as about the recent changes in the folklore of modern Turkish society. Through his scholarly eyes we learned about storytellers in the coffee houses, the riddles children ask, and the proverbs the older people cite. At the time that we searched for new theoretical directions in folklore, he offered us in his meticulous scholarship the necessary descriptive foundation upon which to build new approaches. He was the real Turk among the metaphorical “Young Turks” that sought new perspectives for the discipline. I was privileged to publish one of Professor Başgöz articles “The Tale-Singer and His Audience” in a volume which I edited together with the late Professor Kenneth Goldtein. Professor Dimitri Segal from Israel who reviewed the book singled out Professor Başgöz’s paper as the best in the volume. He stated unequivocally: “İlhan Başgöz’s article is, in my opinion, the best analytical study in the volume. It describes with great sophistication and detail the impact of audience-composition on the structure of traditional Turkish narratives, the hikaye, recorded from the same teller-singer, Müdami.”