Popular Turkish Love Lyrics and Folk Legends

Edited by Jayne L. Warner

Paper $24.95    |    978-0-8156-0920-9    |    2009

Description
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 telling of these engaging stories and his fluid translations of the love lyrics, accompanied by Zeki Fndkoğlu’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, Köroğlu, and Karacaoğlan. The seven sections of the book come alive with images of striking beauty and dramatic power by Fndkoğlu, 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.

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Author, Illustrator, Editor
Talat S. Halman is professor and chairman of the Department of Turkish Literature at Bilkent University in Ankara. Formerly he was on the faculties of Columbia University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and New York University. Halman is the author and editor of more than eighty books, including Nightingales and Pleasure Gardens, The Turkish Muse, and A Brave New Quest. He is also the editor of the Journal of Turkish Literature.

Born in Iznik, Turkey, Zeki Fndkoğlu traveled through every region of the Anatolian Peninsula as a child and young adult before moving to the United States in 1973. His paintings are exhibited widely in the U.S., Turkey, Europe, and Asia. Fndkoğlu is chairman of the Department of Art and Computer Graphics at Montgomery College in Germantown, Maryland.

Jayne L. Warner is the director of research at the Institute for Aegean Prehistory in Greenwich, Connecticut.

6 x 9, 100 pages, 28 color illustrations