Abstract:

Taşlıcalı Yahya Bey (d. 1582) who lived through domination of four different sultans in 16th century and is known as a soldier-poet spending his life in military expeditions rightfully boasts of his achievements at war rather than his identity as a poet. In this sense, in the works of Yahya Bey who is one of the best representatives of “veteran-poet”, there are valuable information reflecting social, political and military panorama of his era. “Şehzade Mustafa Elegy” which is one of these works is also the most well-known poem written in this genre in Classical Turkish literature. The work is important due to narrating the indignation after Kanuni’s execution of his son Şehzade Mustafa during Nakhchivan Expedition and it was also written by a poet who knows Şehzade Mustafa best. In this elegy, which has also became famous as “Kanuni Burlesque”; the poet uses a quite metaphorical language. The use of metaphors is a way of thinking, and at the same time a different way of seeing to perceive the environment and events. Conceptual metaphors and image schemas are the basic elements of metaphorical thinking, which make a latent comparison between two things having common traits. In this study, in the light of conceptual metaphor theory, metaphors detected in “Şehzade Mustafa Elegy” of Taşlıcalı Yahya Bey and messages given through these metaphors will be scrutinized and analyzed.

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