An investigation on the concepts of time and space in Leylâ Hanım and Şeref Hanım

The 19th century was a century when the Ottoman Empire pursued a renovation policy against European states in nearly every field. One field that had its share of these renovation movements was literature. One of the two distinctive features of the period was the training of dîvân poets, who were that century's last representatives of Classical Turkish Literature. The second feature was the abundance of poetesses. Leylâ Hanım and Şeref Hanım were two of our poetesses who had allowed us experience the intensity of meaning of Classical Turkish Literature with their dîvâns in this century and left their mark on the period through their art. This study touches upon the political stance of the 19th century Ottoman Empire, the period's perspective on literature alongside the developments that took place (in literature), and the matters about the lives of our two poets. The concepts of space and time used by our two poets in their dîvâns were reviewed. Then, it provided the lexical meanings of the determined concepts, and based on the couplets determined, it mentioned about which ways these concepts are processed, and how frequently they are used. The last section of the study provided clues about the lives of the poets based on the reviewed words.