In my paper, I will argue that the oft-repeated maxim that Ottoman poetry is but an “imitation” of Persian poetry needs to be re-examined from a critical and interpretative perspective supported by textual evidence. To this end, my study of the Ottoman reception of Hafez aims to demonstrate that the Otto-Persian literary relations can not be treated from a one-sided perspective which celebrates Persian poets by labeling the Ottomans as mere “imitators.” Nor can those relations be studied without any reference to the actual texts and their contexts. Therefore it is only after carefully studying the texts of both traditions that some valid and verifiable conclusions can be drawn as to the Ottoman “imitation” of Persian poetry, which also requires us to be attentive to the historical contexts and situations of those literary texts. I will focus my attention on selected examples of Ottoman lyric poetry composed by the Ottoman sultans and their companion poets by focusing on the 1451-1566 period of the Ottoman literary history. There are two reasons for focusing on this period: first, the beginnings of this period mark the emergence of institutionalized Ottoman court poetry under the direct patronage of the Ottoman sultans. Second, thanks to this royal support and encouragement, the whole period is characterized by a gradually increasing interest in the firmly established literary tradition of the neighboring Persian lands. The sultans and their court poets included in my study are chronologically as follows: Mehmed II (r. 1451-1481) and his poet Ahmet Pasha (d. 1496), Bayezid II (r. 1481-1512) and his state official Cafer Chelebi (d. 1514), Selim I (r. 1512-1520) and his supporter Revani (d. 1523), and finally Süleyman I (r. 1520-1566) and his close companion Baki (d. 1600). In exploring poems by these poets, I will trace the nature and extent of the influence of Hafez of Shiraz (d. 1389), the most celebrated lyric poet of medieval Persia. Specifically, I will concern myself with the Ottoman reception and appropriation of the following two famous poems by Hafez: the opening poem of his Divan and his “Shirazi Turk” poem. To supplement my textual findings, I will also broaden my perspective by taking a brief look at the following three biographies of poets which provide us with information on the Ottoman perception of Hafez and the Ottoman-Persian poetic interactions of the period: Sehi’s Hesht-Bihisht (1538), Latifi’s Tezkiretu’s-Shuara (1546), and Ashik Chelebi’s Meshairu’s-Shuara (1566).

The Sebk-i Hindi (Indian Style) describes a literary movement with roots in the great Iranian poets of the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, such as Hafiz-i Shirazi, Husrev-i Dihlevi, Sa?di and Molla Jami. It was later developed by poets who left Iran fleeing the oppressive Safavid regime and sought freedom in the court of the Moguls in India. The Sebk-i Hindi was known for its complexity, creativity, and intense focus on fresh and new themes and metaphors. The Sebk-i Hindi poets are said to have plundered dictionaries to find archaic words never before used in poetry often making their poems accessible only to those patient enough to solve their complicated puzzles. From the seventeenth century on, the Ottoman Turkish version of the Sebk-i Hindi style enjoyed great popularity. In the seventeenth century, such famous poets as Nef?i, Na’ili, Neshati, Fehim, Shehri, Vecdi, and Nabi were known as adherents to the Indian Style. Perhaps the most innovative and celebrated poets of the 18th century, Nedim and Sheyh Galib, were also strongly influenced by the Sebk-i Hindi. However, these poets, despite their success and reputations as the greatest of the Ottoman poets, could not escape the accusation that they were blindly imitating Persian poets, an accusation that ultimately devalues some of the best Ottoman poetry. This paper aims to explore to what degree the Ottoman Sebk-i Hindi poets, who often referred to canonical Persian poets in their poems, actually “imitated” or “copied” their Persian counterparts. In addition, the paper will also analyze the stories about these Ottoman poets told in the tezkires (biographical dictionaries) to demonstrate the contemporary view that these poets employed Sebk-i Hindi style sorrow and imagery in their poetry not because they were simply imitating the Persian Sebk-i Hindi poets, but rather, because the Sebk-i Hindi itself opened up to them creative avenues of expression for dealing with the very private emotions of sorrow and loneliness. Thus, I will argue that it was not a slavish devotion to Persian poetry but the modes of the Sebk-i Hindi style which appealed to the Ottoman poets by providing them a means to articulate their misery and conceal it in linguistic mystery from “outsiders”.

The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed significant novelties in the literary scene of Istanbul, the capital of a dissolving empire, mostly as a reflection of the more inclusive attempts at societal change. Namik Kemal, a highly prominent figure of this period’s intelligentsia, actively participated in the debates on cultural transformation and gave in-depth thought on the direction Turkish literature should take. His oeuvre, as a result, mirrors the confusions, anxieties, and self-questioning pertaining to Tanzimat (Reformation) era intellectuals, who found themselves in a struggle to coalesce what can be called two different conditions of literary aesthetics, the novel and the Ottoman classical poetry being the two genres that constitute their respective main axes. This paper looks into the introductory chapter of Kemal’s renowned novel Intibah (Awakening, 1876) with an aim to comprehend the ways in which writers of the time, who have been mostly trained within the Ottoman classical tradition, were handling this relatively new state of literary being. It is indeed interesting to note that, in Intibah, Kemal more or less replicates the general narrative structures and allegorical reservoir of classical literature in order to emphasize its outdated status. However, while utilizing the very target of his criticism to overcome it and create a new (and more Westernized) literary environment he often falls back into a seemingly inevitable reproduction of what he disparages, oscillating between a eulogy of an antiquated past and a ridicule of a despised history. In its effort to make sense of this puzzlingly complicated state of mind, this paper consciously avoids recourse to the simplistic view of this transformation as the encounter of two unchanging literary traditions, separated through rigid binaries, such as East/West, old/new, or tradition/modernity. Rather, it recognizes the internal progression of both, as well as the historicity of their interaction, and reflects on the dynamics of interliterary influence, imitation and appropriation in relation to the text in hand. By looking at this text that is deemed to be representative of its context through theories of intertextuality, the paper in fact endeavors not only to formulate a sophisticated approach that would to justice to the complexity of similar Tanzimat texts, but also to set light on post-Republican and contemporary perceptions of Ottoman classical literature.

My paper argues that the appropriation of Western literary forms (such as plays) by Ottoman intellectuals is not simply an "imitation" of European literatures but, rather, is a way of questioning—and even challenging—Eurocentric notions of literature. Abdülhak Hamid Tarhan (1852-1937), with his sixteen plays and essays on play writing, is the leading playwright of 19th century Ottoman Turkish literature. My paper concentrates on his two plays, Duhter-i Hindu (The Indian Girl, 1876) and Finten (1898), in order to explore the ways in which he appropriates Western drama into Turkish literature. In the epilogue to Duhter-i Hindu, Tarhan describes how he adopts the Western "play" to articulate Ottoman social and cultural identity. In this epilogue, Tarhan also gives his definition of a national Ottoman play and acknowledges that he reshapes the Western play by including lyric poems. Hamid also writes some of his plays in verse using traditional aruz rhythms. In those plays, although Hamid adopts the Western play, he does not follow its formal conventions. By re-formulating the master form, he creates a hybrid form which combines the Ottoman classical tradition with the Western play form. This hybrid genre indicates that Hamid's purpose is not simply to copy or imitate Western literary models. Instead, by intentionally misappropriating this Western form, he creates a hybrid form which challenges the authority of the Western form. The Finten as an adaptation of Shakespeare’s famous play Macbeth, reveals Tarhan's literary interactions with European literatures to a broader extent. Shakespeare is a prominent literary figure whom the British have long held up as an example of the universal superiority of British literature and culture. In terms of plot and images, Hamid creates a Turkish text parallel to Shakespeare’s play and, in doing so, challenges the assumed unique, unparalleled character of classical Western literature. Furthermore, unlike the Macbeth, The Finten is a very critical text about British imperialism, so Hamid presents his criticism for British imperialism in the most admirable form for the British. My analysis shows that Abdülhak Hamid’s encounter with Western drama is clearly not “imitation”, which suggests the inferiority and incapability of the imitator, but can be more accurately understood as appropriation and fully competent adaptation to new local purposes.