Melodrama and comedy: Turkish and Armenian modern dramatic literatures in the Ottoman Empire

Modern theater in the Ottoman Empire had a spectacular development, lead by Ottoman Armenians, in the 19th century and it drew a large audience. At the same time many Ottoman intellectuals became playwrights and they produced a greatnumber of plays. This thesis tries to understand the political and social implications of dramatic literature by comparatively analyzing plays written in Ottoman Turkish and Armenian in the period. The thesis has two main arguments: First, I claim that we can analyze the whole dramatic-literary area in three genres (melodrama, historical drama, comedy) and every different generic area discloses and represents a main dynamic in the empire. Melodramas represent dominant political-moralistic tendencies, historical dramas show the search for national identity, and comedies disclose developing market relations and changing economy. Second, by reading texts in Turkish and Armenian together and comparatively, I endeavor to understand mutual relations between Ottoman subjects and negotiationconflict paths these three genres demonstrated. In this perspective, I claim that melodramas and historical dramas on the side of conflict and comedies on the side of negotiation disclose an inexorable struggle. This struggle is the evidence of the empire?s future collapse and the possibility of a peaceful solution at the same time.