Abstract
Some Remarks on the Usage of Metre and Rhyme of the Classical Turkish Poets
Although there have been various studies on the meter
and rhyme of classical Turkish literature, most of them
contain flaws such as either relying on the information in
theoretical books, not on literary materials, or being merely
the presentation of some features of metre and rhyme found
in a poet’s poems. In this article, some of what is known
about prosody and rhyme is tried to be corrected or
renewed based on the lyrics (ghazals) of five poets from
different periods of classical Turkish literature.
Main issues covered in the article are: the amount of
imale frequency by periods or poets; imale in the e sound;
cases where there is no med while it should be, doing med
in the syllables ending with n sound, liaison in the letter
'ayn, pronunciation of Arabic and Persian words
according to Turkish language, repetition of rhyme words,
using suffixes for rhyming. In addition, we touched upon
some of the problems we encountered in the publications
we examined in order to show that in studies on aruz and
rhyme, we should not act with complete confidence in the
publications of the texts.
In this study, which was carried out with the aim of
determining the accuracy of the judgments, some of which
were repeated as axioms, some of which were said with
hesitation due to the scarcity of data, it was revealed that
the information in the theoretical works did not reflect the
practice. In addition, it has been understood that while
examining the poets’ use of meter and rhyme, it is
necessary to take into account the period they are in.
Keywords
Classical Turkish literature, prosody, aruz, rhyme.