Ottoman Poets and Poetics in the Sixteenth Century

This book offers the first-ever partial English translation and commentary of what are arguably the two most important Ottoman biographical dictionaries of poets: the tezkires of Aşık Çelebi and Latifi. While tezkires are mostly culled for their factual data, this book focuses on the non-entry materials, especially the prefaces. These offer intimate glimpses into the authors’ lives, charting their professional ambitions, frustrations and feuds, set against the backdrop of the sixteenth-century