Tales Alive In Turkey

Sixty-seven folktales and anecdotes recorded and translated for those seeking an introduction to the Turkish tradition of oral literature.

More Tales Alive in Turkey is a sequel to Tales Alive in Turkey, the two volumes providing a survey of the wide range of Turkish oral narrative. Materials for both are drawn entirely from the Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University. Whereas the tales in the earlier volume were collected between 1961 and 1964, most of those in More Tales Alive in Turkey were taped in Turkey in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Turkish Muse: Views and Reviews, 1960s-1990s, collects Talat S. Halman’s book reviews written in English and, read chronologically, provides a unique perspective on the development of Turkish literature and criticism during the formative and later years of the Turkish Republic. The new genres adopted from Europe and, to a lesser extent, from the United States include the novel, the short story, the stage play, and the essay. The reviews collected in this volume reflect the way in which these genres developed and matured within their new milieu of Turkish letters. Establishing each book in its literary, social, and cultural Turkish context, Halman then addresses the work’s more international or universal importance. Written over a period of four decades, these reviews illuminate the careers of many writers from their early work to their rise as leading Turkish poets, novelists, and dramatists—Ilhan Berk, Melih Cevdet Anday, Güngör Dilmen, Fazil Husnu Daglarca, and Yasar Kemal, to name just a few. More recent reviews discuss the work of such important figures as Hilmi Yavuz and Orhan Pamuk.

Popular Turkish Love Lyrics and Folk Legends is the first illustrated anthology of Turkish folk poetry and legends published in the United States. Talat Halman’s eloquent, fluid telling of these engaging stories and his translations of the love lyrics, accompanied by Zeki Findikoglu’s vibrant serigraphs, serve as a marvelous introduction to the rich world of Turkish folktales and lyrics. This volume brings together three of the most beloved of Anatolian tales and legends with the life stories and selected poems of four great folk poets—Yunus Emre, Pir Sultan Abdal, Köroglu, and Karacaoglan. The seven sections of the book come alive with images of striking beauty and dramatic power by Findikoglu, a son of Anatolia. Each section features four "visual experiences"—extraordinary in their delineation of nature and human figures, teeming with moods stirring or sinister. They capture not only the splendor of nature in Anatolia but also the quintessential spirit of the legends and the lyrics. Cultural and literary historians as well as poetry lovers will enjoy this stunning union of art and literature.

First published in 1996. A ten-hour tale, long enough to fill a night in the telling, artful enough to keep all its listeners eagerly awake: such marathon narratives constitute a recurrent theme found in folktales worldwide. This entire book records, annotates and interprets one such rare performance, by Behcet Mahir. a man who joins great storytellers whose art has survived their deaths and transcended their native communities to become the shared heritage of a worldwide audience of lovers of oral tales.