Faust ve Nasrettin Hoca: Trajik, Mizahi ve İronik Yapılar Yoluyla Kültürel Bilge

This study offers a comparative and interdisciplinary investigation into the ways proverbs and idioms operate as carriers of cultural wisdom in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust and in the well-known anecdotes of Nasrettin Hodja. Although these works emerge from distinct literary, historical, and cultural traditions-one rooted in Western canonical literature and the other in Eastern oral folklore-they reveal striking conceptual convergences. Both corpora articulate reflections on human fallibility, moral responsibility, experiential learning, and social criticism, suggesting that cultural wisdom often transcends geographical and generic boundaries. In Faust, such insights are expressed through a tragic-philosophical framework that foregrounds existential struggle, intellectual ambition, and ethical tension. By contrast, Nasrettin Hodja’s anecdotes employ humour, irony, and paradox to convey comparable moral lessons in a more accessible and socially grounded manner. Methodologically, the study is based on a comparative literary and folkloric analysis of approximately thirty proverbs and idiomatic expressions selected from Faust (Goethe, 1997) and Nasrettin Hodja’s narratives (Kayaerli, 2001). These expressions were examined in terms of their semantic content, pragmatic function, and embedded cultural contexts. Translation strategies constitute a central analytical lens, particularly with reference to the theoretical perspectives of Nida, Venuti, and Berman, allowing for an evaluation of how cultural wisdom is transferred, transformed, or negotiated across languages and traditions. The findings demonstrate strong intercultural parallels between tragic and comic modes of expression, highlighting that folkloric language functions as a cultural bridge between Eastern and Western traditions. Ultimately, the study shows that despite differing aesthetic forms, both traditions converge on similar ethical insights and shared human concerns.