The generic development of the Tıflî stories

The Tîflî stories are a group of works consisting of prose stories mostly printed in nineteenth-century Istanbul. The main contention of this study, entitled "The Generic Development of the Tıflî Stories", is that the Tıfiî stories, examined in light of the historical process of their origin, development, and decline, present a full-fledged literary genre. The Tıflî stories, whose known corpus consists of the works "Bursah'nin Kahvehanesi" (The Coffee Shop of the One from Bursa), Hanger li Hikâye-i Garibesi (The Strange Story of the One with the Dagger), Hikâye-i Çevri Çelebi (The Story of Cevrî Çelebi), Hikâye-i Tayyârzâde (The Story of Tayyârzâde), "Hikâyet" ("Story", also known as Sansar Mustafa hikâyesi, "the story of Mustafa, the Weasel"), İki Biraderler Hikâyesi (The Story of the Two Brothers), Letâ'ifnâme (Collection of Amusing Stories), Meşhur Tıflî Efendi ile Kanlı Bektâş'm Hikâyesi (The Famous Story of Tıflî Efendi and Bloody Bektâş), and "Tıflî Efendi Hikâyesi" (The Story of Tıflî Efendi), as well as various versions of these works, have undergone numerous changes in the course of time. These changes are examined here under various headings, using a comparative approach also drawing on various outside sources on Ottoman history and literary theory. First, the study focuses on the works' external and linguistic properties. Under the heading of external properties, variables such as print technology, page length and page dimensions are examined, while under the heading of linguistic properties, the ways in which these relate to social strata and the development from an oral to a written language are examined. After this, the study turns to various dimensions of the worldview presented by the stories. Here, issues such as social stata, forms of entertainment, gender relations, and concepts of virtue are dealt with. Lastly, the study examines the stories according to criteria of literary, or formal, realism, correspondence to historical reality, and social relevance. The developments that the Tıflî stories exhibit in all the examined areas enable us to divide them up into three main stages of development. In the conclusion of this study, these stages are related to the theory of literary genres and contextualized as representing the main stages in a process of generic development. The study concludes that the Tıflî stories, while influenced by various literary traditions, constitute a separate literary genre of their own. keywords: realism, Ottoman literature, novel, genre