Concept of Sorrow in the Classic Ottoman Poetry

Abstract

Lyric poetry, dominated by the emotion of sorrow, is the essence of the Classical Ottoman poetry. Out of all emotion-indicating words the sorrow is the one that appears the most, and the concept of sorrow is inevitable topic for the analyses of the Classic Ottoman poetry where it is always expressed through extended (poetical) metaphors. Innovative from the language perspective, these metaphors unveil the poet’s extraordinary insight and outstanding rhetorical skills that enable him to juggle predefined vocabulary in unorthodox way, as well as to wittily make use of the existing system of motives and symbols. The poet’s virtuosity was depicted by his ability to create a new, unseen, image from well known and many times seen elements. In light of the aforementioned, this paper looks at innovating usage of the word gam (sorrow) and other expressions that incorporate it in themselves. Hence, the paper elaborate to which extent these expressions stem out of conceptual metaphors, whether there is an addition of new elements or specific knowledge in the existing mapping, and whether it is a result of merging several metaphors in new structures.