Kuvâyi Milliye ve Şeyh Bedreddin Destanı'nda halk edebiyatının dönüşümü
Author(s)
Advisor
Halman, TalâtDate
2011Publisher
Bilkent University
Language
English
Type
ThesisItem Usage Stats
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Abstract
In this thesis, Nâzım Hikmet’s (1902–1963) approach to folk literature as
well as his relationship to oral tradition are discussed via a focus on his works Kuvâyi
Milliye (1965) and Simavne Kadısı Oğlu Şeyh Bedreddin Destanı (1936). In both of
these works, the relation of the work to folk literature is in the foreground, and it is
the nature of this relationship that this thesis sets out to explore.
In the period prior to Şeyh Bedreddin Destanı, we can see Nâzım Hikmet
holding a rather negative attitude towards folk literature. However, both Şeyh
Bedreddin Destanı and Kuvâyi Milliye are among the earliest of Nâzım Hikmet’s
works to reveal his later drift towards folk literature. In this study, while
investigating the transformation of folk literature in both of these works will be
examined, it is also argued that there is a problematization at work, of the national
epic form in Kuvâyi Milliye and of the position of folklore against political authority
in Şeyh Bedreddin Destanı.
The first chapter of the thesis explains how the folkloric elements found in
Kuvâyi Milliye should be interpreted, and the conclusion reached is that the fact that
the characters in the text represent peasants and working class people serves an
important diversion from the conventions of epic tradition, which depends primarily
on narratives produced by the ruling upper class. It will be seen that, in these works,
the love and heroism present in folk stories is approached in terms of social struggle.
Motifs and narratives borrowed from folk literature are aggregated in the form of a
national epic in this text. Though it includes influences taken from Soviet folklore,
Nâzım Hikmet’s model for national epic as employed in this work entails a different
outlook on Turkey’s nation state-oriented definition of folklore of the time. In this
thesis, it will thus be demonstrated that, while transforming the elements of folk
literature in the context of national epic, Nâzım Hikmet also reinterpreted the
conception of national epic.
In the second chapter of the thesis, the relationship between folklore and
governing power as interpreted in Şeyh Bedreddin Destanı is explored. It will be seen
that Nâzım Hikmet introduces Şeyh Bedreddin’s rebellion, which occurred in the
fifteenth century, as a class struggle by prioritizing the dissident attribute of folk
literature in the narrative. In the construction of Şeyh Bedreddin as a socialist hero,
the dynamics of the folk tradition are observed by making associations with the
phenomenon of social banditry. In this respect, Şeyh Bedreddin Destanı employs a
discourse and a subject matter parallel with the Köroğlu narratives, in which
concepts of justice and equality are emphasized under the theme of banditry. It will
be demonstrated that, in the transformation of folk literature, Nâzım Hikmet
mythologizes Şeyh Bedreddin as a bandit representing socialism. Thus, this study
will demonstrate that Kuvayi Milliye and Şeyh Bedreddin Destanı reveal different
approaches in regard to folk literature in terms of their discourse and subject matter.
In the third chapter of the thesis, by applying the method of intertextuality, it
will be demonstrated that both of these works employ a common manner of formally
transforming the folk tradition. Nâzım Hikmet, by employing various narrative
techniques in both works, created a modern narrative form associating epic structure
with the genre of novel, and succeeded in creating a dialogic discourse akin to that of
the novel genre within the monologic discourse of traditional epic narration. As a
result, this study concludes that Nâzım Hikmet constructs a dialogic epic narrative in
which diverse and varying discourses confront each other in the two works studied in
this thesis.
This thesis concludes that Kuvâyi Milliye and Şeyh Bedreddin Destanı,
though having differing positions in terms of their discourse and subject matter as
borrowed from Turkish folk literature tradition, exhibit a common character in their
formal structure and the narrative techniques they employ.