The twenty two essays collected in Turkish Language, Literature and History offer insights into Turkish culture in the widest sense. Written by leaders in their fields from North America, Europe and Turkey, these essays cover a broad range of topics, focusing on various aspects of Turkish language, literature and history between the eighth century and the present. The chapters move between ancient and contemporary literature, exploring Sultan Selim’s interest in dream interpretation, translating newly uncovered poetry and exploring the works of Orhan Pamuk. Linguistic complexities of the Turkish language and dialects are analysed, while new translations of 16th century decrees offer insight into Ottoman justice and power. This is a festschrift volume published for the leading scholar Bob Dankoff, and the diverse topics covered in these essays reflect Dankoff’s valuable contributions to the study of Turkish language and literature. This cross-disciplinary book offers contributions from academics specialising in linguistics, history, literature and sociology, amongst others. As such, it is of key interest to scholars working in a variety of disciplines, with a focus on Turkish Studies.

In Essays on Turkish Literature and History Barbara Flemming makes available essays partly previously published in German. They offer insights gained through decades of scholarship. Although the Ottoman period is central, a wide range is covered, including an early Turkish principality, Mamluk and Ottoman Egypt, and contemporary southeastern Turkey. The essays look into historical and political factors involved in the preoccupation with the world’s ending, into Muslim-Christian dialogue, the sultan’s prayer before battle, and the bilingualism of poets. Of particular interest are the sections on female participation in mysticism, on an anti-Sufi movement in Cairo, on the Ottoman capital’s appeal to collectors and emigrants (Diez, Süssheim, Böhlau), and on the far-reaching effects of alphabet change.

From Orhon inscriptions to Orhan Pamuk, the story of Turkish literature from the eighth century A.D. to the present day is rich and complex, full of firm traditions and daring transformations. Spanning a wide geographic range from Outer Mongolia and the environs of China through the Middle East all the way to Europe, the history of Turkish literature embraces a multitude of traditions and influences. All have left their imprint on the distinctive amalgam that is uniquely Turkish. Always receptive to the nurturing values, aesthetic tastes, and literary penchants of diverse civilizations, Turkish culture succeeded in evolving a sui generis personality. It clung to its own established traits, yet it was flexible enough to welcome innovations—and even revolutionary change. A Millennium of Turkish Literature tells the story of how literature evolved and grew in stature on the Turkish mainland over the course of a thousand years. The book features numerous poems and extracts in fluid translations by Halman and others. This volume provides a concise and captivating introduction to Turkish literature and, with selections from its extensive “Suggested Reading” section, serves as an invaluable guide to Turkish literature for course adoption.

The twenty two essays collected in Turkish Language, Literature and History offer insights into Turkish culture in the widest sense. Written by leaders in their fields from North America, Europe and Turkey, these essays cover a broad range of topics, focusing on various aspects of Turkish language, literature and history between the eighth century and the present. The chapters move between ancient and contemporary literature, exploring Sultan Selim’s interest in dream interpretation, translating newly uncovered poetry and exploring the works of Orhan Pamuk. Linguistic complexities of the Turkish language and dialects are analysed, while new translations of 16th century decrees offer insight into Ottoman justice and power. This is a festschrift volume published for the leading scholar Bob Dankoff, and the diverse topics covered in these essays reflect Dankoff’s valuable contributions to the study of Turkish language and literature. This cross-disciplinary book offers contributions from academics specialising in linguistics, history, literature and sociology, amongst others. As such, it is of key interest to scholars working in a variety of disciplines, with a focus on Turkish Studies.

This book is an invitation to rethink our understanding of Turkish literature as a tale of two “others.” The first part of the book examines the contributions of non-Muslim authors, the “others” of modern Turkey, to the development of Turkish literature during the late Ottoman and early republican period, focusing on the works of largely forgotten authors. The second part discusses Turkey as the “other” of the West and the way authors writing in Turkish challenged orientalist representations. Thus this book prepares the ground for a history of literature which uncouples language and religion and recreates the spaces of dialogue and exchange that have existed in late Ottoman Turkey between members of various ethno-religious communities.

The 1928 Turkish alphabet reform replacing the Perso-Arabic script with the Latin phonetic alphabet is an emblem of Turkish modernization. Grammatology and Literary Modernity in Turkey traces the history of Turkish alphabet and language reform from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, examining its effects on modern Turkish literature. In readings of the novels, essays, and poetry of Ahmed Midhat, Recaizade Mahmud Ekrem, Omer Seyfeddin, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, Peyami Safa, and Nazim Hikmet, Nergis Erturk argues that modern Turkish literature is profoundly self-conscious of dramatic change in its own historical conditions of possibility. Where literary historiography has sometimes idealized the Turkish language reforms as the culmination of a successful project of Westernizing modernization, Erturk suggests a different critical narrative: one of the consolidation of control over communication, forging a unitary nation and language from a pluralistic and multilingual society.

The Great War was the first example of a total war in history, reflected in the cultures and literatures of Europe in the shape of propaganda. What began as civic patriotism developed into a weapon of war, programmed and organized by the state to devastating effect. In almost all countries, writers of different ideological hues were ready to undertake the job of representing the war, in accordance with the state's guidance. War propaganda in the Ottoman Empire, the most anachronistic belligerent of the war according to historians, was condemned to failure. In the underdeveloped and multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman-Turkish intelligentsia could not produce adequate propaganda to support the battlefronts and the home front. Why did propaganda efforts die after 1915? Can this be explained with the laziness or cosmopolitanism of the cultural agents? Or did the lack of propaganda derive from reasons that are more material?Erol Koroglu seeks to address these questions in a unique interdisciplinary assessment of Turkish literature and propaganda, interpreting literary texts written by the representative writers of the period. These interpretations follow a literary cultural history method and give an analysis of the complex interaction between literary texts and the historical context. Koroglu discusses the subjects of First World War propaganda, Turkish nationalism and national identity construction. He concludes that the unfavourable conditions in the Ottoman-Turkish cultural sphere, the literature of the years 1914-1918, even if superficially full of propaganda aims, was essentially the continuation of a project to build a national culture, inherited from the pre-war years and never completed. Turkish literature therefore did not reflect powerful propaganda, but was more a difficult attempt to create 'national identity'.