Abstract
Tezkirah, biographical texts of poets, has been a popular genre in Classical Turkish literature. It has the origins in Eastern Turkish literary, which improved and changed in Anatolian literary following centuries. Sehi Bey composed the first ever known tezkirah in Anatolia in 1538. After that, many tezkirahs have been composed by difference till 20th century. The tezkirahs of the 16th and 18th centuries mostly focused on the biographies of poets whereas the 17th century ones are like anthological works in general. The epistemological alteration of Ottoman Empire (by facing into the Western world) led some changes in art and cultural world, too, and the tezkirahs of 19th and 20th centuries have been “Westernized” and modern as a result of this. Poets’ tezkirahs can be said to have two main significances for Turkish literature history. Firstly, some less-known poets (besides the most popular ones) are presented to today’s literary researchers. Secondly, the selection of poems to these tezkirahs gives us some ideas about the literary pleasure of the ages those were composed. We can assume that popular poetries loved by public were selected for tezkirahs additionally to the composers’ favorite poetries. However, some tezkirah composers preferred an extra content apart from biographies and poetry selections. For instance, some composers like Sehi Bey (1471-1548), Latifi (1491-1582) and Rıza (?-1671) tried to review and criticize the poetries those they selected. From this standpoint, this paper aims to detect how Sâlim (an 18th century’s man of letters) defined good/bad poetry and what are his basic criteria rendering poetry as good/bad in his work Tezkire-i Şuara (Poets’ Tezkirah). Classical Turkish poetry didn’t have a poetica in Western sense and defining “reasonable, good, beautiful, successful” poetry (in Turkish literature) will be more possible by examining Sâlim’s and other composers’ tezkirahs.