Turgut Uyar'ın Divan'ında bir araç olarak biçim = Form as an instrument in Turgut Uyar's Divan
Author(s)
Advisor
Halman, TalâtDate
2005Publisher
Bilkent University
Language
English
Type
ThesisItem Usage Stats
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Abstract
In 1970 Turgut Uyar, one of the leading members of the poetry movement
known as the “second new”, published a collection of poems entitled Divan. This
collection differs from his other works in that it contains poems in couplets
employing the Ottoman gazel, kaside, and rubai forms. Following the publication of
Divan, Uyar found himself at the very center of the controversy on “benefiting from
the tradition” and he received mixed reviews, from great praises to serious downright
criticism. He responded to the praises and criticisms by stressing the claim that he
was not a traditionalist poet but that he only employed traditional forms merely as
instruments to achieve specific ends.
The aim of this thesis is to identify Uyar’s stance with regard to Ottoman
divan poetry, in order to determine his conception of the tradition and to study his
“instrumentalization of form” by analyzing Divan under the guidance of his own
statements.
This thesis argues in four chapters that in Turgut Uyar’s Divan there is an
overarching theme of popular revolution. In the first chapter, preparation for the
revolution, the problematic of “alienation” and the relation between the form and
concept of “continuity” are analyzed. The second chapter, which examines the
“stream” metaphor in the book, deals with Uyar’s stance with regard to Ottoman
divan poetry in the context of form-content incongruity, and discusses the issue of
“form as medium of ideology”. The third chapter questions the relationship between
history and form along with the concepts of “typification,” “homology” and
“correspondence”. The last chapter, examines the disjunction between the center and
the periphery on social as well as literary planes, and dwells on the concept of
“nomadic war machine,” as well as on the subjects of resistance to public culture,
mysticism, heterodoxy, and activism.
In his Divan, Turgut Uyar sought to bring forth the culture of the populace,
and in resorting to revolutionary content while covering the theme of the struggle of
the oppressed classes, he employed “obsolete” and “superceded” poetic forms to
attack Ottoman “court literature” and strove to rewrite that literature in a way that
would reflect the values of the masses.