What a Force is Laughter: Satire and the Development of Modern Azerbaijani Literature (1850-1939)

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Satire played a remarkably important role in the emergence of modern Azerbaijani literature, and was closely tied to linguistic, artistic, and political developments in the South Caucasus. From the second half of the 19th century onwards, vernacular Azerbaijani gradually gained in prominence as a vehicle for literary expression, challenging the established and elevated status of Ottoman and Persian. Authors writing in the vernacular exploited new literary forms and genres imported from Europe - notably theatre and the press - to forge a more direct and demotic idiom. These reform-minded Azerbaijani writers seized upon satire as a powerful tool in their efforts to challenge traditional modes of thought and behaviour, to disseminate and promote modern ideas, and to bring about concrete social and political change. In short, my doctoral research project can be seen as an effort to evaluate - in literary and historical terms - the observation made by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in a memorable passage of The Gulag Archipelago: "What a force is laughter!" My research will offer a detailed survey and analysis of political and religious satire during the formative period of Azerbaijani literature between 1850 and 1939. It will analyse its manifestation in various genres: plays, poetry, fiction, journalism, and children's literature. The full appreciation of satirical texts requires careful attention be paid to the precise context in which they were written, as well as to the specific aims, methods, and motivations of the individual authors. Broadly speaking, my research covers three overlapping periods: a) the second half of the 19th century during the consolidation of Russian rule over Azerbaijan; b) the period of far-reaching reforms and revolutions between 1905 and 1920; c) early Soviet Azerbaijan (1920s and 1930s) and the wide-ranging transformations that this period witnessed. In his important 2002 article, "Who Read What in the Ottoman Empire (19th-20th centuries)?", Johann Strauss challenged scholars of Ottoman literature to take minority literatures seriously, focusing in particular on Armenian, Greek, and Jewish authors who wrote in Turkish but used the traditional script of their communities. In a similar vein, Laurent Mignon has argued that authors from minority groups, often holding dissident views, have been "marginalized or pushed into the footnotes by literary historians in Turkey and in Western academia." Strauss also notes that "classical languages were gradually replaced by more vernacular varieties," a further category that has been largely neglected in Western scholarship. It is no surprise, therefore, that Azerbaijani literature has been severely overlooked, despite long and widespread acknowledgement of its importance as a vehicle for reform and modernisation in the Muslim and Turkophone world. This is partly due to the fact it can be considered a 'minority' language for much of its modern history, subordinated on a political and cultural level to Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and subsequently Russian. By focusing on satire, and its close relationship with the establishment of the vernacular as a valid literary language, I hope my research will offer a modest but important step towards a fair appraisal of Azerbaijani literature in its formative period: it will provide a general survey of satire in its various genres and guises between 1850 and 1939, as well as presenting original and in-depth studies of particular authors and texts, many of which are yet to receive any attention in Western academia. At the same time, it is hoped that readers will gain a fresh perspective on the wider social, cultural, and political transformations that the region witnessed during this period.