Dissertation
Atalialu Serapheim and the Turkophone Orthodox Christians of Anatolia: A study of eighteenth-century Turkish texts in the Greek alphabet (Karamanlidika)
Stylianos Irakleous defended his thesis on 6 February 2020
- Author
- Stylianos Irakleous
- Date
- 06 February 2020
- Links
- LeidenRepository
This thesis deals with the first century of Karamanlidika printing and more precisely the Turkophone Christian Orthodox cleric Serapheim Attaliates, one of the most important figures in Karamanlidika publishing. Through the study of his life and of the language used in Serapheim’s books, an effort is made to trace the motives and beliefs that urged him to publish his books, his techniques, and the impact his books had on the Turkophone Orthodox of Anatolia and on Karamanlidika as a phenomenon.The major question is what Serapheim’s works tell us about the form and function of Karamanlidika texts in the Anatolian context, about their connection to the Turkish Anatolian dialects and about the wider historical and cultural context of the Christian Turkophone Orthodox of the region. Serapheim’s works reflect a conscious use of everyday speech in the Anatolian Turkish dialect of the south-western region in the eighteenth century, rather than the elaborate Ottoman Turkish language used by the elite. Serapheim incorporated many different linguistic varieties and variants in his books, so when dealing with the religious vocabulary and the liturgical parts they fit the definition of a formulaic language which to some extent might have functioned as a “sacred language”.
Supervisor: prof. dr. H.L. Murre-van den Berg
C0-supervisor: Dr. M.Kappler (Università Ca' Foscari Venezia)