This book brings to life an impressively broad array of performances in the Eastern Mediterranean. It covers many traditional types of performance, including singers, dancers, storytellers, street performers, clowns, preachers, shadow-puppeteers, fireworks displays, and semi-theatrical performances in folk and other celebrations. It explores performance of the secular as well as of the sacred in its many forms, including Sunni, Shiite, Sufi, and Alevi Muslims; Sephardic Jews and those in the Holy Land; and Armenian, Greek, and European Catholic Christians.
The book focuses on the Medieval and Early Modern periods, including the Early Ottoman. Some papers reach backward into Late Antiquity, while others demonstrate continuity with the modern Eastern Mediterranean world. The articles discuss evidence for performers and performance coming from archival sources, architectural and manuscript images, musical notation, historical and ethnographic accounts, literary works, and oral tradition. Across the broad range of issues, chronology, and geography, certain fundamental topics are central: concepts of drama and theatricality; varied definitions of 'performance' and related terms; the sacred and the profane, and their frequent intersection; and complex relations between oral and written traditions.
Author(s): Arzu Öztürkmen, Evelyn Birge Vitz (eds.)
Series: Late Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 20
Publisher: Brepols
Year: 2014
Language: English
Pages: 616
Illustrations xi
Foreword by Richard Bauman xvii
Acknowledgements xix
Introduction xxi
Part 1. Verbal Art as Performance
Metin And 3
Storytelling as Performance / Metin And 5
The Maqama — Between a Tale and a One-Man Show: In Search of its Form of Performance / Revital Refael-Vivante 19
Orality, Text, and Performance in the 'Book of Dede Korkut' / Arzu Öztürkmen 37
Signals of Performability in the Croatian Glagolitic 'Legend of St John Chrysostom' / Marija-Ana Dürrigl 47
The Performance of Joinville's Credo / Michael Curschmann 63
Medieval Folktales, Modern Problems, and a Gifted Preacher: The Case of Rabbi Joseph Hayyim and the 'Tale of a Fox that Left his Heart at Home' / David Rotman 77
'The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus': Can We Reawaken Performance of this Hagiographical Folktale? / Evelyn Birge Vitz 89
Part 2. Performance under Imperial Realms
How to Entertain the Byzantines: Some Remarks on Mimes and Jesters in Byzantium / Przemysław Marciniak 125
Between Admiration, Anxiety, and Anger: Views on Mimes and Performers in the Byzantine World / Tivadar Palágyi 149
Performance and Ideology in the Exchange of Prisoners between the Byzantines and the Islamic Near Easterners in the Early Middle Ages / Koray Durak 167
Fireworks in Seventeenth‑Century Istanbul / Suraiya Faroqhi 181
Clowns at Ottoman Festivities / Özdemir Nutku 195
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762): Her Turkish Performances / Danielle Haase-Dubosc 203
The Fusion of 'Zar-Bori' and Sufi 'Zikr' as Performance: Enslaved Africans in the Ottoman Empire / Ehud R. Toledano 215
Part 3. Modes and Varieties of Entertainment
How Dark is the History of the Night, How Black the Story of Coffee, How Bitter the Tale of Love: The Changing Measure of Leisure and Pleasure in Early Modern Istanbul / Cemal Kafadar 243
One Man and His Audience: Comedy in Ottoman Shadow Puppet Performances / Daryo Mizrahi 271
Shadow Theatre, the 'Karagoz' ('Kara Gyooz') and the Texts of Ibn Daniyal (1248–1311?) / Mas'ud Hamdan 287
Armenian Traditional Music and the Performance Practices in the Armenian Community of Jerusalem / Noune Zeltsburg-Poghosyan 297
Constructing the Performed Identity of Sephardic Songs / Judith R. Cohen 311
Gypsy Musicians and Performances in the Ottoman Balkans / Elena Marushiakova and Vesselin Popov 327
Part 4. Iconography
Scenes of Performers in Byzantine Art, Iconography, Social and Cultural Milieu: The Case of Acrobats / Viktoria Kepetzi 345
Theatricality of Byzantine Images: Some Preliminary Thoughts / Anestis Vasilakeris 385
Theatrical Features in Armenian Manuscripts / Emma Petrosyan 399
Capital Initials with Images of Musicians in Armenian Manuscripts / Hrant Khachikyan 407
Glorious Noise of Empire / Gabrie la Currie 425
Part 5. Ritual Roots of Performance
Representing the Moulid: Salah Jahin's Al-Layla al-Kabira between Populist and Nationalist Aspirations / Samia Mehrez 453
Performative Conceptions of Social Change: The Case of Nevruz Celebrations in Pre-Ottoman and Ottoman Anatolia / Yücel Demirer 465
Alevi Ritual Movement: Its Representation in Fifteenth and Sixteenth-Century Texts and Today / Fahriye Dinçer 481
The Moreška Dance/Drama on the Island of Korčula (Croatia): A Turkish Connection? / Elsie Ivancich Dunin 503
The Show and the Ritual: The Mevlevî Mukabele in Ottoman Times / Cem Behar 515
The Ritual of Vardan Mamikonyan / Zhenya Khachatryan 533
Epilogue
The Performative Turn in Recent Cultural History / Peter Burke 541
Index 563
