Comparison of Fuzuli's Layla and Majnun with Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

Comparative literature studies, which are in the development stage in our country, are mostly carried out among modern works or generally among the literary works of close cultures. The number of studies examining the relations between the products of classical Turkish literature and Western literature is very few. The strong similarities based on fiction, theme, emotion, and discourse, between the narratives of Layla and Majnun and Romeo and Juliet, which have various versions in Eastern and Western literatures, have previously been noted by writers such as Süleyman Tevfik, Agah Sırrı Levend, Ali Asgar Hikmet, but it has been determined that a comprehensive study examining the relations between the two works has not been conducted. It is known that many Eastern literary works were transferred to the West both during the Andalusian Umayyads and during the Crusades. The story of Layla and Majnun is among the literary products that are transferred to the West through these means. In this study, the similarities that need to be explained between the stories of Layla and Majnun and Romeo and Juliet, which have become the symbols of love in the East and the West, are analyzed comparatively through the works of Fuzuli and Shakespeare, which are the most beautiful versions of these stories. In the introduction part of the thesis, the history of cultural interactions between East and West, the transfer of rich fictions in Eastern literature to the West and their effects on European literature are discussed. In the first chapter, Fuzuli's Layla and Majnun and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet were examined using the chronology method of comparative literature and it was determined that both works were the product of Middle Eastern folklore in terms of their fiction. The work of Nizami, whom Fuzuli took as a model while writing his work, and the work of Brooke, which Shakespeare used as a source, were examined by mesology method, differences were determined and Fuzuli and Shakespeare's contributions to the story were highlighted. In the second part, the plots, time-space elements and characters of the two works were compared and it was determined that the similarities between the fiction of the two works were too dense to be explained by chance. In the third part, the themes in the two works were examined using the thematology method, and strong similarities in terms of emotion and thought were determined in the processing of themes. This thesis, which is the first study in which the relationship and similarities between the works of Layla and Majnun and Romeo and Juliet are examined in detail, will be a guide for new comparative studies to be done with different methods.