A BRIEF STROLL THROUGH RŪM

Abstract

Leaving behind the city of Konya, this chapter follows Sultan Valad’s representatives as they spread throughout Rum. This allows us to envision how the intersecting literary landscapes of Anatolia might sound and resound, as performers recited Greek, Turkish, and Armenian poetry aloud during this period. Rather than merely surveying the major literary works that circulated at this time, this chapter traces the migration of units of composition, both smaller and larger than actual texts, in order to trouble the assumption that these literary cultures were rigidly unlike one another or were ontologically distinct. This chapter therefore offers a reevaluation of how we might conceptualize what is native and foreign, indigenous and exogenous within these literary cultures.