TWO DIFFERENT LATIFI TEZKERES AND COPIES

Abstract

Latifi's Tezkere [Biographies of Poets], which first appeared in 1546, is of great importance within the Ottoman prose tradition. However, there is no modern edition for the text of 1546 tezkere, and there is no study of style development that shows the differences between the two versions. Today, the only modern edition is based on the text of the extensively revised second (1575) version. It is perceived both by the editor and many Ottomanist scholars as representing the 1546 original text of Latifi Tezkere and is referenced in work on Ottoman literature with no mention of the substantive paralogism this implies. As a result, much research (articles, dissertations) based on the Latifi Tezkere has not produced accurate results. In this article, a transcribed digital text of the 1546 Latifi Tezkere and comparisons with the text of the 1575 version, will shed light on the history of prose, style and the tezkere genre. The study will consist of three parts: Part 1, basic information about the history of the Latifi Tezkere; Part 2, an introduction to new developments in the 16th century Ottoman prose tradition and an evaluation of how these developments affected Latifi as a writer and the Latifi Tezkere as a biography; Part 3, will describe the profound differences between the two versions separated by thirty years, with examples and visual images and conclude with the argument that these two versions should be treated as two related but distinct and original texts.