The Irish Poet who Reversed the Western Gaze on the Ottoman Geography: James Clarence Mangan / Batı’nın Osmanlı Coğrafyasına Bakışını Tersine Çeviren İrlandalı Şair: James Clarence Mangan

Abstract

James Clarence Mangan contributed to the widespread recognition of Ottoman Diwan Literature by translating a considerable number of poems to English and by writing original poems through mimicking the Ottoman poetic tradition. Mangan represented the Ottoman geography and its aesthetic appearances in a positive light under the influence of Oriental Renaissance movement while going beyond the Eurocentric view of his time. Because Mangan’s work has received little attention in Turkish academia, this article aims to shed light on the question of why Mangan was interested in Ottoman Diwan tradition against the backdrop of the social and historical events in Britain and Continental Europe. Mangan’s attempt is also taken as an endeavour to find a solution to the impasses he experienced in the epistemology he was born into and to confront such impasses by representing the East in his poetry. This article comes to the conclusion that, being influenced by the European movements of his time and by the Irish problem, Mangan was interested in the Ottoman geography which did not stigmatise him and which offered different alternatives to and from the Western epistemology

Keywords

• James Clarence Mangan
• Irish literature
• the middle east
• diwan poetry