Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Literature

Extract

The origins of Turkish literary modernity can be traced back to a mid-nineteenth-century Ottoman Muslim engagement with Enlightenment ideals. The literary form of the novel appeared during the Tanzimat era of modernization, first through translations (e.g., of François Fénelon's Têlêmaque and Victor Hugo's Les Misérables in 1862 and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe in 1864), then through imitations that merged local form and content such as traditional med-dah storytelling with the European novel. Early novels such as Şmsettin Sami's Taaşşuk-i Talât ve Fitnat (1872, The Romance of Talât and Fitnat), Namik Kemal's Intibah (1874, The Awakening), and Ahmet Mithat Efendi's Durdane Hanim (1882, Miss Durdaneh) opened up a social space of self-examination with a moral intent to guide and instruct readers in the face of European cultural encroachment. The transition from a literary modernity to a fin-de-siècle aesthetic of literary modernism occurred through authors like Halit Ziya U§ akhgil, who were able to emphasize aesthetic concerns and structure in novels like Mai ve Siyah (1897, Blue and Black) and Aşk-i Memnu (1900, Illicit Love). In other words, the Ottoman novel itself was a medium of modernization. Its mediation, revision, and updating of narrative traditions in a new genre marked the beginnings of a literary modernity that persisted into the twentieth century ... log in or subscribe to read full text