“We Must Make Men”: Constructions of Masculinities and Femininities in Parker’s Village Folk Tales of Ceylon

Prior to the advent of print capitalism, people of ancient Sri Lanka used folklore -- ‘folktale’ is one of the various forms of folklore – to create and recreate the sense of a larger nation with a political hierarchy and moral order. Scholar, Michael Roberts (2002), associates the creation of nationalism in Sri Lanka with pre-modern forms of visual ( e.g., wall paintings) and oral modes (e.g., storytelling) of communication. Folklorists in Sri Lanka have positioned folk tales – and folklore - as a national heritage. The present research adds a gender dimension to the already existing scholarship on Sri Lankan folktales, by analyzing a sample of folk tales for modalities of gender creation – both masculine and feminine. This research will re-read the folk tales in the sample, for acts of gender, with careful attention paid to gendered functions, performance, engagements and positioning in the tales. This is a preliminary study related to a larger study and it attempts to fill an existing scholarly gap in the study of gender dimensions of folk tales in Sri Lanka.

OUSL Journal Vol.9 2015: 113-130