The rhetoric of space in Ottoman lyric poetry

Abstract

This paper proposes an analytical assessment of the rhetoric of space in both the Ottoman gazel, a short lyric poem in couplets, and the nasib, a lyric introduction to qasida. The point of focus: that the distance between the beloved and the lover in Ottoman lyric poetry is, in some notable sense, analogous to the distance between the monarch and his slave. In this analogy poetic images of the City of Istanbul, the residence of the beloved/monarch and the capital of the Empire, stand as an extended metaphor for yearning and desire. On the other side of the analogy is modest provincial space of a lover. The paper explains this relation using the examples from the works of Ottoman poets from the fifteenth until the late nineteenth century.