Epilogue

The mixing of diverse peoples in premodern Anatolia gave rise to affinitive literary cultures, articulated by kindred voices—modes of composing and interpreting literature in a manner that remained strikingly cognizant of ‘others.’ As this book demonstrates, dialogue across the multiple literary cultures of Anatolia had a technical component, finding expression through diverse praxes of literary adaptation, response, gloss, quotation, and emulation. This portfolio of compositional techniques often set the terms of how this multilingual dialogue unfolded, at least insofar as it sought to make cross-cultural contact legible (or permissible) in a particular manner. The epilogue of Kindred Voices therefore builds upon the case for considering this adaptive portfolio as greater than the sum of its parts. Compounded over time, these practices helped to shape a widespread sense of what the ‘literary’ is—what the literary looks like, what it speaks of, and what it sounds like—across multiple languages and religious communities in medieval Rum.