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

讽刺在现代阿塞拜疆文学的出现中发挥了非常重要的作用，并与南高加索的语言，艺术和政治发展密切相关。从世纪下半叶开始，阿塞拜疆方言逐渐成为文学表达的工具，挑战了奥斯曼和波斯的既定和崇高地位。用白话文写作的作家利用了从欧洲引进的新的文学形式和体裁--特别是戏剧和新闻--来打造一种更直接、更通俗的习语。这些具有改革思想的阿塞拜疆作家把讽刺作品作为一种有力的工具，努力挑战传统的思想和行为模式，传播和促进现代思想，并带来具体的社会和政治变革。简而言之，我的博士研究项目可以被视为一项努力，以文学和历史的术语来评估亚历山大·索尔仁尼琴在《古拉格群岛》中令人难忘的一段话中所做的观察：“笑是多么强大的力量！“我的研究将提供1850年至1939年阿塞拜疆文学形成时期政治和宗教讽刺的详细调查和分析。它将分析它在各种体裁中的表现：戏剧，诗歌，小说，新闻和儿童文学。要充分欣赏讽刺作品，就必须仔细注意作品写作的确切背景，以及作者个人的具体目的、方法和动机。从广义上讲，我的研究涵盖了三个重叠的时期：a）19世纪世纪下半叶，俄罗斯巩固对阿塞拜疆的统治; B）1905年至1920年的深远改革和革命时期; c）早期苏维埃阿塞拜疆（1920年代和1930年代）以及这一时期见证的广泛变革。 在他2002年的重要文章《谁在奥斯曼帝国（19 - 20世纪）读什么？”，约翰·施特劳斯要求奥斯曼文学的学者认真对待少数民族文学，特别关注亚美尼亚，希腊和犹太作家，他们用土耳其语写作，但使用他们社区的传统文字。同样，洛朗·米尼翁（Laurent Mignon）认为，来自少数群体的作家，往往持有不同的观点，已经“被土耳其和西方学术界的文学历史学家边缘化或推到脚注中。施特劳斯还指出，“古典语言逐渐被更多的本土语言所取代”，这是西方学术界基本上忽视的另一个类别。因此，毫不奇怪，阿塞拜疆文学被严重忽视，尽管长期以来广泛承认其作为穆斯林和突厥语世界改革和现代化工具的重要性。这部分是因为它在现代历史上被认为是一种“少数民族”语言，在政治和文化层面上从属于波斯语，奥斯曼土耳其语和随后的俄语。通过关注讽刺，以及它与建立白话作为一种有效的文学语言的密切关系，我希望我的研究将为公正评价阿塞拜疆文学的形成时期迈出适度但重要的一步：本书将对1850年至1939年间的各种类型和形式的讽刺作品进行全面的考察，同时也呈现对特定作者和文本的原创和深入研究，其中许多尚未在西方学术界得到任何关注。与此同时，希望读者能够对该地区在这一时期目睹的更广泛的社会，文化和政治变革有一个新的视角。

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.