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- Title
ḤAMZA-NÂME'NİN NESİR ÜSLÛBU.
- Authors
YELTEN, Muhammet
- Abstract
Ottoman prose has evolved over many centuries by exhibiting different characteristics along its history. One key characteristic is the difference in the foreign features and sentence structure of Ottoman prose and poetry. In general, there is one literary style widely seen in Ottoman poetry. Conversely, there were two styles in Ottoman prose. One style is used in scientific and didactic texts, whereas the other one is adopted in literary works. The scientific prose style is plain and easy to grasp. On the contrary, the literary prose style is complex and filled with many artificially crafted expressions. The sentence structure used in the literary style is another key difference from the one used in scientific proses. In Ottoman literary prose, sentences were long and unclear that makes it difficult to understand. This was mainly because there was no counterpart of meter in prose unlike poetry. The prose enables a complete independence to build the structure of a sentence. It is possible to stretch the parts of a sentence as much as the writer wishes without damaging its integrity. Liberal choices in shaping the sentences lead to a disorder in Ottoman prose and caused understanding problems. In particular, the extensive usage of gerunds and grammatical particles resulted in an unbounded expansion in the number and scope of sentence elements. In 14th and 15th centuries when Hamzavi was assumed to have lived, the main themes prose works were about religious and didactic topics. Mostly translated from Arabic and Farsi, these works are written in a plain language that can be understood by the general public. Even though foreign words, expressions and grammatical elements were occasionally used they do not prevent the work from conveying its message. Using a plain language with the concerns of being understood was a main feature of the writers in that time frame. More so was the early 15th century during the time of Anatolian Beyliks, when a plain Turkish was used in all works. However, after the midcentury, the language became more dense and composed of complex elements. This was mostly inspired by the poetry in which harmony and artistic images were heavily used. Thus, the prose grew to be more and more intricate. It appears that Ĥamza-nâme was a beloved work that became part of the oral tradition among Turkish people long before it was written on paper. A major contributing factor for its adoption was the plain language used as well as the sincere faith in Islam that was felt by the general public. The author has written the 72-volume Hamza-nâme, which consists of the life stories of Hz. Hamza in chronological order, with a style that benefits from both local and foreign elements of language.
- Publication
Electronic Turkish Studies, 2014, Vol 9, Issue 9, p17
- ISSN
1308-2140
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.7827/TurkishStudies.7509