Abstract
Every age has its own dynamics as regards politics, social life, culture, powerrelations, and perception of art. Accordingly, the twenty-first century is a periodwhen postmodern view of the world forms the central, dominant approach inliterature. The novel is no longer “created” but “produced” through such newconcepts as parody, pastiche, collage, intertextuality, and metafiction with a desireto incorporate a polyphonic worldview, create the effect of alienation, and showthe relative nature of what has been called “real(ity)”. In this article, first a brieftheoretical discussion of the postmodern parody, which is achieved through the useof intertextuality and irony, is presented. The theoretical basis of such narrativetechniques are constructed, pertaining to how they can be handled, evaluated, usedin literary analysis through the formation, and the maintenance of new discoursesmight be clearly understood. Then, the use of “parody” and “irony” in “Efrasiyab’sTales” is analyzed and how the mythical, metaphysical beliefs, ideas, and valuesare parodied in the newly created context is reflected. Through the analysis, it isindicated that postmodern texts, as exemplified in “Efrasiyab’s Tales”, presentvarious appearances of what is accepted as real(ity) and lead the reader intoquestioning and (re-)evaluating it from different perspectives. In the article, howthe author uses and parodies so many mythological stories, names, scripts fromthe holy books of Judaism, Christianity, İslam and even Buddhism is discussedin relation to the main texts. Some ideas, beliefs, rituals and practices are handledin an ironic way and parodied so that the reader is forced to re-evaluate all s/he has as ideology, belief, religion, culture (or anything belonging to culture andcivilization) in the modern world.