Overview

Hikâye is an engaging study of Turkish romance by its leading contemporary student. Ilhan Basgöz presents vivid descriptions of the singers who perform these tales, the performance venues, interactions between singers and audiences, and the romance texts as artistic objects. Part of the fun is the playful interaction between the author and the seasoned characters who taught him their poetic craft. Hikâye will be the definitive work on this tradition, which has cognates in Persian and Arabic tale-telling, as well as links to European medieval romances. A valuable contribution to folklore studies, for scholars, students, and general readers alike.

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9780253380173

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Reviews

[This] the culmination of a lifetime of fieldwork dating back to [the author's] formative years working under the renowned Turkish folklorist, Pertev Naili Boratav. As such, the book is not only an overview of the performance of hikaye, or folk romance, but it is also an ethnographic history chronicling the dramatic changes that have taken place within that tradition, as it has largely disappeared from rural Anatolia... Basgoz, with the benefit of half a century of fieldwork, offers a helpful corrective to previous scholarship on Turkish performance poetries. -Ethnomusicology ... one of the most original and compelling ethnographies of folklore that I have read in years. Basgoz creatively interweaves his theoretical enquiry with a narrative rendition of his encounters with [teller-singer] asiks, a rendition rich in asiks' words and experiences. In addition, he powerfully juxtaposes his own autobiographical narratives, ethnopoetry, memories, and reflections with his thoughtful and detailed analysis. -Mustafa Kemal Mirzeler, Western Michigan University, Journal of Folklore Research, January 26, 2009 Basgoz provides myriads of information and interviews that leave the door open for other folklorists and oral historians to continue to research and study the hikaye in light of current society and technological development. Hikaye is an excellent read for both the scholar and the student indeed for any person who wishes to learn about Turkish folklore romance. -ORAL HISTORY REVIEW A truly important contribution to folklore and to Turkish studies. The interviews with the artists, the text of the romance, and the index of fifty romances make the work an essential contribution to folkloristics. -Henry Glassie Hikaye bears the marks of meticulous research and thoughtful reflection about Turkish folklore and studies of verbal arts in general. Ilhan Basgoz's examination of Turkish folk romance demonstrates useful techniques for the inquiry of both theory and performance dynamics. Basgoz's unique investigation also attends to what has often been ignored in the scholarly research of Turkish folk romance art and artistry in general, making it a functional paradigm for performance analysis, and for Middle East scholars in particular. -Journal of American Folklore Basgoz's book... is useful for shedding light on a less explored area of verbal art. It will be of interest to folklorists, students of folklore, area specialists in Middle Eastern Studies and the Mediterranean, and especially to specialists and students in Turkish Studies. Basgoz is a true witness to the asik. I read this book as the opus magnum of the author, who considers the asik and hikaye performances in a holistic, comparative perspective. -Western Folklore One of the most enduring topics of debate in folklore research is the question of performance: how do we understand, convey, and theorize about performance? what is the role of the performer? who is the audience? what relation does the traditional text have to the general cultural context? Furthermore, how do we analyze the interaction of these components in a performance situation? In his remarkable book, Hikaye: Turkish Folk Romance as Performance Art, Ilhan Basgoz engages with these questions through an ethnographic and folkloric meditation on hikaye performance, based on his lifelong research with many asiks, the teller-singers of the Turkish romance, and with the audiences of hikaye performance.Hikaye: Turkish Folk Romance as Performance Art is one of the most original and compelling ethnographies of folklore that I have read in years. Basgoz creatively interweaves his theoretical enquiry with a narrative rendition of his encounters with asiks, a rendition rich in asiks' words and experiences. In addition, he powerfully juxtaposes his own autobiographical narratives, ethnopoetry, memories, and reflections with his thoughtful and detailed analysis.Basgoz's main argument is that folklorists can recover and convey certain truths about a performance event, its audience, and performers by studying their construction of discourse. He contends that the hikaye performance in particular is a social event which combines, in a subtle way, the past, present, and future culture of the folk. 'In each performance, a teller-singer asik, carrying a saz in his hand, faces a group of people, an audience, and narrates a traditional hikaye, in the sense that it was told by other asiks in the past and will continue to be told in recognizable form in the future, until the tradition itself ceases to exist' (153). Basgoz argues that the creativity of the individual artist in a performance of the hikaye is controlled by the values and wishes of the audience, on the one hand, and the tendency toward consistency of the traditional text, on the other. Therefore, although the traditional hikaye in its performance undergoes important changes, the norms and demands of the audience are restricted by the creativity of the narrator and the tendency toward continuity of the traditional hikaye. According to Basgoz, a good hikaye performance is a micro-model of an ideal society, every component of which works in harmony with the others. In this harmonious discourse, we find the past and the present culture interacting selectively with a future image as expressed by symbols, signs, direct discourse, and the kinetic movement of the teller.Basgoz goes beyond the contextual study of folklore and proposes a new performance paradigm that draws on but also moves beyond Bakhtin's approach of 'dialogic imagination.' Drawing on his lifelong research and his close experience with numerous asiks and their audiences, Basgoz demonstrates that the dynamic interaction in a performance may change every component of a hikaye, but the name and the morphological structure remain constant. In every performance, as Basgoz demonstrates, a tension as well as reconciliation develops in the locus of performing. This tension derives from deviations from established norms and behaviors in the performance, and missteps on the part of the audience are punished by the narrator, sometimes quite severely.Basgoz provides valuable data on the life stories of the asiks. In the chapters devoted to this biographical information, eleven asiks share their views and opinions, and tell of their lives, educations, when and how their great passion for becoming an asik began, and how they value their storytelling and audiences. They also recount their relationships with the local and central authorities. Although, as Basgoz admits, he has learned much from these disclosures, he warns the reader that the information given by the asiks should not be accepted as completely truthful, because asiks, like other individuals who report their life stories, reveal only what is socially acceptable. For this reason, Basgoz is skeptical of these life patterns as the main components of hikaye performance.His study of performance does not ignore a broader comparative perspective that seeks to compare Turkish, Greek, Iranian, and Arab folk romances. His comparative study documents that the romance tradition has a cross-cultural dimension among these nations with common features in structure, plot, the concept of love, traditional devices, the ethnographic background of the teller-narrator, and the musical accompaniment of the performance. Basgoz cautions the reader not to attribute the origin of these romances to a specific nation or geographic area. He cautions that it would be a mistake to study isolated individual examples to the exclusion of the great corpus of the Middle Eastern romance. Instead, he directs our scholarly attention to a comparative study that emphasizes the complex and reciprocal interaction of the various components of the romance tradition.Basgoz's study of the structure of the hikaye follows Propp's methodology while sidestepping one of its shortcomings. The most important criticism of Propp is that he reduces the folktale to an abstract mathematical formula, ignoring its language, plot, motifs, and narrator. Unless this abstract form is attributed some meaning within a culture, it is hard to separate a folktale from a fake tale. Basgoz, following Propp's methodology, establishes six plot actions (referred to as functions in Propp's theory) common to all romances, but also explores the meaning of these six plot actions in Turkish society. By analyzing mainly the dreams of two asiks, he discovers that the structural pattern of the hikaye is 'the expression of a complex wish or fantasy of a young boy--a boy who dreams of challenging his father's authority, of leaving his family, and of meeting, falling in love with, and marrying a girl--to establish a new family in which he possesses authority' (150).Basgoz provides us with new theoretical insight in his discussion of function and meaning in folklore. He proposes that folklore in general and any individual folklore genre cannot and should not be attributed a constant and general function and meaning. The performer of folklore may embed, in negotiation with the performance components, different functions and meanings in his art. To bolster that theory, Basgoz provides a persuasive and enjoyable example of performances of the narrative unit of childlessness. In one performance, the unit takes on a religious meaning; in another, a protest of the heavy taxation of peasants; in yet another, an expression of despair of women from various religious and ethnic groups.Basgoz's study includes the analysis of male and female audiences, and documents their impact on performance with lively examples from the field. On one occasion, a member of the audience accused the teller of ignorance, and the teller was so ashamed that he stopped performing his art for three years until he learned it to perfection. On another occasion, a member of the audience was so upset toward the end of the romance of Kerem and Asli, that when the hero was about to die, he jumped from his seat, drew a pistol, aimed it at the narrator, and said: Look, if you kill the hero I will kill you (204). Not surprisingly, the asik provided a happy ending to the romance.The book also includes a full romance, the hikaye of Asik Garip and Sah Senem, which was told by a famous asik and recorded during a real performance. The text shows by special markings the traditional narrative elements and the digressions of the asik. The appendix includes the main plot actions of fifty hikayes and a general summary of the plots of the entire body of material used in the study from Basgoz's data.I wish that Basgoz had explored hikaye performances without the use of saz. Although he incorporates some of his own experiences in the book, we never learn how hikaye is performed in homes by storytellers who are not professional asiks. In greater Anatolia, it is the custom for mothers, fathers, or grandparents to narrate such stories, transporting the members of their audiences to fantastical worlds.This suggestion aside, Hikaye is an important work and I recommend it to all folklorists, especially those with an interest in the poetics of performance and in Middle Eastern Studies. Basgoz engages in broad theoretical debates, drawing on the performance of hikaye to discuss the transformation of images and motifs in this tradition. I can imagine that scholars will be reading and debating Basgoz's arguments for some time.Mustafa Kemal Mirzeler, Western Michigan University, Journal of Folklore Research, January 26, 2009

<p>. .. one of the most original and compelling ethnographies of folklorethat I have read in years. Basg?z creatively interweaves his theoretical enquirywith a narrative rendition of his encounters with [teller-singer] asiks, a renditionrich in asiks' words and experiences. In addition, he powerfully juxtaposes his ownautobiographical narratives, ethnopoetry, memories, and reflections with histhoughtful and detailed analysis. -- Mustafa Kemal Mirzeler, Western MichiganUniversity, Journal of Folklore Research, January 26, 2009

<p>. .. one of the most original and compelling ethnographies of folklorethat I have read in years. Ba g z creatively interweaves his theoretical enquirywith a narrative rendition of his encounters with [teller-singer] a ks, arendition rich in a ks' words and experiences. In addition, he powerfullyjuxtaposes his own autobiographical narratives, ethnopoetry, memories, andreflections with his thoughtful and detailed analysis. -- Mustafa Kemal Mirzeler, Western Michigan University, Journal of Folklore Research, January 26, 2009

Author Information

Ilhan Bagöz is Professor Emeritus of Folklore and Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University.

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