Ways of seeing: Nev'izade Ata'i's Alemnüma and canges in the visual perception of Ottoman society in the early seventeenth century

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b2486542_(Table of contents)

This thesis is an attempt to explain the projection of an author's seeing and perception of his surroundings on words based on a literary work in the context of the history of culture and mentality. The focus of the thesis is Nevizade Atai’s Alemnüma masnavi, which is in saqiname genre, written at the beginning of the 17th century. The 17th century is a period in which the works produced in saqiname genre in the Ottoman literature showed a serious increase. The Alemnüma, written in this period, differs from earlier saqinames in terms of narrative style and the spaces, and it contains some similarities with saqinames written later in the same period. The fact that the visual depiction of the space and objects in the work constitutes the basic characteristic of the work provides important signs regarding the ways of the poet’s perception his environment visually. The basic characteristics of these signs are the realistic representation of space and objects, the emergence of subject-object separation in space depictions, and the use of visual depiction more intensely than event narration. When these are traced, it is understood that Atai had a different way of seeing when compared to the earlier masnavis. This thesis explains the qualities and what of this new way of seeing and examines it in terms of the history of mentality and cultural history in Ottoman society in the early 17th century