Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Bilig, cilt.2025, sa.113, ss.53-78, 2025 (SSCI)
Blind people have had important roles in various fields of science and art throughout the history. The issue of whether their creativity is related to their visual impairment continues to be discussed. In Turkish cultural history, the number of scientists and artists who enlightened the society with their creativity and works they produced despite being visually impaired is noteworthy. Among them are epic narrators and folk poets. In this article, among these folk poets, not those who were blind in the last years of their lives due to old age, but those who were blind from birth or at the beginning of the creative periods of their art were included in the analysis. It is also notable that almost all of them, in addition to their visual impairments, suffered from poverty, produced works rich in thought and meaning and kept their tradition alive and brought innovations to it, despite the fact that they were illiterate or learned to read and write in the later phases of their lives. In the article, information about visually impaired minstrels, epic narrators and folk poets in Anatolia, Azerbaijan, Yakutia (Saha), Altai, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkmen areas is given. Thus, the relationship between being visually impaired and skillful speech is tried to be revealed in the context of the oral poetry representatives mentioned in the article.