Kün: Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies

Abstract

The Westernization process that started with Tanzimat enabled us to establish closer relations with Western literature. In this way, many literary genres in Western literature (stories, novels, etc.) entered our country through our intellectuals. The genre of theater, which entered our literature in this period, has a special importance in that it was not included in the Muslim-Sharq literatures and had not been recognized before. It cannot be denied that literary genres have similarities with their Western counterparts, especially poetry, criticism and the oriental story, although there are differences in terms of structure. However, it is difficult to say that the genre of theater has a counterpart in our literature. This is not limited to our literature, but is also the case in other Islamic literatures. Although it traditionally found a place in our literature with the genres of middle play, meddah, karagöz, etc., the entry of theater in the modern sense was again in the Tanzimat period. Firstly, translations from the West inspired Turkish writers and they started to write theater works. Şinasi's play Şair Evlenmesi, which served as the basis for the construction of our national theater, was an important step in this sense, and Namık Kemal clearly expresses his thoughts on the art of theater with both his work Vatan Yahut Silistre and Celâl Mukaddimes, and plays an important role in the development and popularization of the genre. Names such as Ebüzziya Mehmet Tevfik, Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem, Ahmet Mithat Efendi, Şemsettin Sami also contributed greatly to the development of the theater genre with their works. Although the generation that came after these names was subjected to the censorships of Abdülhamit II, many writers found the opportunity to publish and stage their works in the liberal environment created with the declaration of the Constitutional Monarchy II, and in addition, writers who had not written theater works before also wrote theater works and put their works forward. In our study, Sait Hikmet, one of the writers who grew up in this period, who was not well known and remained in the background, was introduced and the reader was provided with information, and a theater work of his, Kimi Seviyor, was transferred from Ottoman Turkish and the work was analyzed.