중앙아시아 튀르크계 유목민 영웅 서사시『데데 코르쿠트의 서』 고찰

Abstract

An epic is the collection of stories that deals with the courage of people. If a country has abundant amount of legends and epics, it could mean that their history is that much more resplendent. Heroic epics are in the memories of all communities and races. Important historical events were transformed into stories and certain rules that are common in various communities and cultures were embedded into the stories. In this sense, one of the important common characteristics of epics is that they become abundant in the form of orally transmitted literature and are passed down to future generations. Epics written in what can be called the repository of the Turks, the Dede Korkut Kitabı are narratives that carry valuable racial identity that cannot be calculated into certain amount of money. The stories included in Dede Korkut Kitabı are about the conflicts of Oghuz tribe, who resided in the landscape of Syr Darya located to the east of Caspian Sea and Aral Lake, with other tribes in the area. The book contains the preface that explains who Dede Korkut is, and twelve stories, which are believed to have been orally passed down, and was recorded in writing between 15th and 16th centuries. The reason behind this belief is that the characteristics of the language, orthography, and phoneme indicate that the text cannot have been written earlier. The existing works are the Dresden woodblock-printed book that is consisted of preface and 12 stories, and the woodblock-printed book in the Vatican library that is consisted of preface and 6 stories. The stories included in the book sometimes shows the epic characteristics, but what is notable is that it includes realistic contents of daily life. The work is assessed as the fruit of literature along the boundary of epics and folktale. Most of the narrative is written in prose, but the dialogues are generally written in verses with innate rhythm. The work can be considered as an epic, fairy tale, or history. For instance, surrealistic incidents occur and characters with superhuman powers appear in the stories. Also, fairies and god of death also appear, which shows the fairy tale side of the work. Additionally, the epic includes the lives of Oghuz Turks and culture, which shows the historic aspect to this work. In conclusion, Dede Korkut Kitabı connotes the social aspect, belief, customs, lives, history, culture, and tradition of the Oghuz Turks, and is a cultural masterpiece that also includes important informations of other contemporary tribes.