Sonlessness as Cultural Trauma in the Book of Dede Korkut: Reproductive Legitimacy, Collective Memory and Symbolic Continuity
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This article re-examines the motif of sonlessness in the Book of Dede Korkut through the interconnected frameworks of collective trauma, reproductive legitimacy, affective memory, and transgenerational transmission. While folkloristic scholarship has largely interpreted sonlessness as a problem of patriarchal inheritance and lineage continuity, this study argues that it constitutes a psychocultural structure expressing anxieties concerning social legitimacy, exclusion from collective memory, and the loss of collective futurity. Drawing on close reading, comparative folkloristic analysis, and psycho-cultural interpretation, the study examines stories of the Dede Korkut corpus through the theoretical perspectives of trauma studies, affect theory, cultural memory, and transgenerational transmission. Comparative references to Korean, Japanese, and Indian folkloric traditions are used to identify psycho-cultural parallels without presuming historical-genetic connections. The analysis demonstrates that sonlessness is repeatedly transformed from an experience of reproductive absence into social stigma, ritual compensation, anxiety over the loss of the son, and a demand for heroic validation. The study further shows that the son functions not as a biological heir but as a carrier of lineage, social recognition, heroic legitimacy, collective memory, and imagined future continuity. Ritual practices such as prayer, sacrifice, feasting, and blessing operate as mechanisms of symbolic repair and social reintegration rather than solutions to biological infertility. The originality of the study lies in conceptualizing sonlessness as a mediated form of reproductive trauma within an epic system. It concludes that the motif ultimately encodes a collective fear of symbolic disappearance and disrupted continuity.
DOI: 10.56334/sei/9.9.2
Authors: Yasin Khalilov, Jala Zeynalli
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W7213668317