Jewish Narratives of the Traditional Ottoman Shadow Theatre Karagöz

The lecture aims to shed light on the characters of the Sephardic Jews by revealing all the peculiarities of their narratives in the pieces of the traditional Ottoman shadow theatre Karagoz. It is widely accepted that this type of shadow theatre was brought from Egipt to Istanbul during the reign of Sultan Selim I (1512-1520), immediately after his conquest of Egipt in 1517. The productions constituted a special frame of comic performances in the Ottoman world inhabited by men and women of different ethnic and linguistic communities. The theatre was performed and developed exclusively by representatives of non-Muslim communities and flourished in Istanbul and other urban aries throughout the Ottoman Empire from the early 17th to the early 20th century, embracing some of its salient features of social norms, ethnicity and communication codes, as well as the barriers of daily life. Accordingly, the use of language in the plays of the Ottoman Theatre Karagoz, either Turkish or Ladino, is an important component incorporated into narratives and events that especially engaged people`s interest. The focus of this lecture is on anthropological-linguistic analysis and description of the narratives of Jewish characters that appear in seven plays of the traditional Ottoman shadow theatre Karagoz. Primarily, the lecture deals with narratives such as proverbs, idioms, poems, and other expressions -with iconicity, function, meaning and the role of narratives within the context of the theatrical text, as well as with the effects of their aesthetics and presence. This lecture also suggests that in addition to illuminating the distinctiveness of the narratives of the Sephardic Jews, it is important to establish narrative parallels with other ethnic communities represented in this form of theatre as universal forms of communication, as well as comparisons with current types.