Images of Women in Ottoman Literature

An Analysis of Literary Representations of Women in Zenan-Name by Enderunlu Fazil

Abstract

Zenan-name (The Book on Women), a mathnawi by the Ottoman poet Enderunlu Fazil, was written in the late 18th century and widely read in the early 19th century. In terms of imagology, it is considered among the most interesting works of the post-classical Ottoman literature. Relying on the tradition of şehrengiz, in this poem the author presents lively and humorous physical and psychological portraits of women from different parts of the world: those who lived within the Ottoman Empire, as well as foreigners outside the territories of the Ottoman Empire. Despite the often-disputed literary value, the Zenan-name is a text of immense imagological potential that has not been systematically researcherd until today. Starting from the postulates of imagology, a branch of comparative literary studies that explores discursive constructions of heteroimages, this paper analyses the images of women described in the Zenan-name, also trying to examine the extent to which the poet’s images of women are determined by social and historical circumstances, or else by cultural, literary or discursive conventions.