Allegory in the Classical Turkish Literature: Is it a Genre, or a Style?
Allegory, the art of saying something while meaning another, has rarely been studied in Turkish literature. Considered as a discursive apparatus of the pre-Enlightenment period, allegory is used in Turkish literature more than any other literature. Some concepts such as metaphor, symbol etc. are confused with allegory. Thus, the conceptual framework of allegory should be clarified. The main objective of this article is to discuss whether allegory is a genre or a style, which has almost never been an academic issue in Turkey. In spite of its common characteristics that make possible to think allegory as a genre, such as personification, bellum intestinum (internal conflict), quest, temporal and spatial vagueness, proportion, polysemy and intertextuality, it will be more accurate to evaluate allegory as a style because of its lack of thematic integrity.
