Two Epic Heroes: The Anglo-Saxon Beowulf And The Turkish Oghuz Khan A Comparative Study

Abstract

The concept of World Literature was put forward by Goethe approximately more than two centuries ago. The rise of nationalism in the European continent in the 18th century accelerated the interest in the others’ literary works among the European nations. This interest legitimizes the need for a scientific view in the field. The idea of Comparative Literature has been around since then. French school filled the gap first. It has an empiric and a positivist perspective and looks for evidence of cause-effect, source-receiver relation. Literariness is not a concern. In the 20th century, the centre of gravity for Comparative Literature moved to America. For the American school, the text is everything and searching for aesthetic values and literariness are the main goals of the Comparative Literature. The elitist point of view in the 18th century has been abandoned. There is no hierarchy between the texts and similarities and differences have the same value. In this sense, comparative studies try to analyse the texts belonging to different nations to disclose the universal components of literature. Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf and Turkish epic Oguz Khan which are the focus of this study bear similarities and differences from the perspective of universal epic heritage. In this study, I analyse the literary aspects and historical values of these two epics from the perspectives of Comparative Literature.

Keywords

• Oghuz Khan
• Beowulf
• Epic
• Mythology
• Middle Ages Epic

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