Embodiment of the Manhood in Folklore: Keeping Secret from Women in Azerbaijan in the Context of a Real and Virtual Social Environment

Abstract

This article investigates reasons for keeping secrets from women in real and virtual social environment of Azerbaijan through a manhood perspective. The investigation has revealed that the masculinity within the society creates the folklore patterns that prohibit the transfer of the secrets of this gender group to women and on the other hand, prohibit the connection of women with the male social environment. The attitudes supporting manhood are not expressed directly in the folklore texts, but are articulated sporadically, yet their symbolic manifestations influence all the events in the text. In general, investigating the psychosocial complexes within folklore provides extensive opportunities for the study of creative facts in a projective context. In this article, the embodiment of manhood in folklore has been analyzed based on Azerbaijani fairy-tales, jokes and proverbs. The results of the research reveal that sharing a secret to a woman is constructed as deprivation of manhood in the socio-cultural environment of Azerbaijan. In this article, the concept of the men’s keeping secrets from the women has also been investigated within the framework of the Azerbaijani-language virtual social environment. The examples from the Internet sources considering Azerbaijani folklore, which have recently become the cultural reality, have been selected and analyzed in order to explain manhood stereotypes. The results of the investigation show that unlike the traditional folklore facts, the concept of the men’s keeping secrets from the women in the virtual social environment is presented in a more ironic and comic manner. The urgency to examine manhood stereotypes in the context of humor and irony is explained through introducing the alternatives to the tradition and free attitude to the stereotypes of Internet folklore.