Thematic and folklore analysis of Güvâhî's literary works

Within the Turkish narrative tradition, spanning from the Orhun inscriptions to contemporary literary works, the pieces of Güvâhî, considered among the significant examples of the advice literature genre, have been examined within the scope of this thesis. While previous studies generally focused on transcription into modern letters and linguistic analysis, in this study Güvâhî's advice texts has been analyzed narratively by using the exploratory thematic analysis method to be come useful for today's readers. Through this approach, the study contributes to the narrator's goal of transmitting knowledge and experiences acquired from scholars to future generations, helping them attain happiness in both worldly and spiritual realms. By consulting the foundational biographical sources of Turkish literature and modern publications, as well as benefiting from the narrator's works, information about Güvâhî's life, art, and writings has been compiled and presented to the academic community. In this study, the manuscript closest to the works' original writing date was first transcribed into modern Turkish script and translated into contemporary Turkish. Subsequently, the thematic structures, narrative frameworks, and folkloric elements of the stories were analyzed through a text-centered examination. In this context, the thesis is structured into three main sections. The first section includes literature related to advice literature (Pendnâme) as a narrative genre. The second section encompasses Güvâhî's biography and general information about his works. The third section shows the thematic structures, narrative elements, and folkloric motifs in Güvâhî's works: Pendnâme, İbretnâme, and Gurbetnâme. Additionally, the final part of this section provides a transcription into modern Turkish script and an intralingual translation into contemporary Turkish of unpublished versions of Güvâhî's works (P, İ, G). In the conclusion, the findings and observations obtained during the thesis analysis are presented. The examination of Güvâhî's works has revealed various insights into 16th-century Turkish cultural life, local values, social realities, and the mindset of the period, as well as reflections of historical figures such as Nasreddin Hodja, Hacı Bektâş-ı Velî, and Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. Additionally, it has provided an understanding of the author's perspective and the literary significance of the works. In summary, this study concludes that Güvâhî's advice texts, as significant writings of collective memory, have an instructive function, possess a rich repertoire of proverbs and idioms, including various folkloric motifs, and thematically reflect both the author's mindset and the intellectual framework of the period.