Religious Boundaries through Emotions: The Representation of Emotions and Their Group-Forming Function in Alevi Poetry

Abstract

Although emotions occupy an important place in Alevism, their representation in Alevi history and the present has not yet been sufficiently researched. This study addresses this desideratum and discusses the representation and codification of emotions on the basis of central representatives of Alevi poetry. The focus of this study is the conjunction of constitutive teachings with basic emotions. In the poems, religious beliefs that are considered constitutive are explicitly linked to emotions such as love, grief and anger. In this way, central beliefs become emotionally charged and correspondingly more accentuated. At the same time, the poems convey an emotional expectation to the target audience: various rhetorical stylistic devices are used to convey to the addressees how they should react emotionally to certain ideas, memories and beliefs. In this way, these emotions fulfil the function of feeling rules that must be observed in order to be part of the collective. The analysis of Alevi poetry suggests that emotions have been an important factor in the history of Alevism for social order, group formation and religio-cultural demarcation.