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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.709561
EAN: 9780822334248
ISBN: 0822334240
Label: Duke University Press
Manufacturer: Duke University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 440
Publication Date: 2004
Publisher: Duke University Press
Studio: Duke University Press

The Age of Beloveds offers a rich introduction to early modern Ottoman culture through a study of its beautiful lyric love poetry. At the same time, it suggests provocative cross-cultural parallels in the sociology and spirituality of love in Europe—from Istanbul to London—during the long sixteenth century. Walter G. Andrews and Mehmet Kalpakli provide a generous sampling of translations of Ottoman poems, many of which have never before appeared in English, along with informative and inspired close readings. The authors explain that the flourishing of Ottoman power and culture during the "Turkish Renaissance" manifests itself, to some degree, as an "age of beloveds," in which young men became the focal points for the desire and attention of powerful office-holders and artists as well as the inspiration for a rich literature of love.

The authors show that the "age of beloveds" was not just an Ottoman, eastern European, or Islamic phenomenon; it extended into western Europe as well. They demonstrate this by examining the cultures of Venice, Florence, Rome, and London during the same period. Andrews and Kalpakli contend that in an age dominated by immensely powerful absolute rulers and troubled by war, cultural change, and religious upheaval, the attachments of dependent courtiers and the longings of anxious commoners aroused an intense and peculiar interest in love and the beloved. The Age of the Beloveds reveals a new commonality in the cultural history of two worlds long seen as radically different.