Papers by Zeynep Seviner
This paper investigates the intricate connections between sexuality, desire and clothing in Halid... more This paper investigates the intricate connections between sexuality, desire and clothing in Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil’s turn-of-the-century novel Aşk-ı Memnu (Forbidden Love, serialized in 1900), which is perceived to be one of the founding blocks of prose fiction in Turkish. More specifically, the paper focuses on the role of clothes and the shopping for clothes in shaping the relationships between the two female protagonists, with the help of the theoretical framework provided by René Girard in Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure. Through a reconsideration of the major dynamics of plot and character development, enabled by a new type of relationality between clothes and their wearers or commodities and their users, the paper seeks to position the century-old novel within its historically specific cultural and economic context, and hence responds to existent criticism that tends to see it as divorced from the social reality of its time.
Conference Presentations by Zeynep Seviner
In Halit Ziya's seminal novel entitled Mai ve Siyah (“Blue and Black,” published in 1898), the pr... more In Halit Ziya's seminal novel entitled Mai ve Siyah (“Blue and Black,” published in 1898), the protagonist Ahmet Cemil, an aspiring poet, describes the literary field in quite bleak terms. As a young poet hired by the Mirat-i Suun (Mirror of Affairs) magazine, Ahmet Cemil's daily life revolves around writing like a machine in order to meet deadlines, filling up columns with uninteresting news or other miscellanea, hunched over the worn-out desks of the old and gloomy office, smoking chains of cigarettes with the hope to appease his overworked mind, all of which, in his opinion, cause a gradual and painful death of his intellectual abilities. And all of this for a very small monetary gain. Halit Ziya himself expresses similar frustration in his personal memoirs, contrasting the disappointing realities of the publishing world with the bright pictures he had in mind before coming to Istanbul. Ironically, then, the publishing house, the very place where aspiring writers seek to realize their dreams of becoming successful men of letters also becomes the location where those dreams come to an end, unless they already have the economic means that will allow them to survive in this profession.
This irony, I argue, is a major consequence of certain transformations within the literary field at this particular juncture of Ottoman literary history. During the 1890s, first, the fast growth of print capitalism allowed the fast multiplication of printing houses in the imperial capital, and second, the decreasing importance of the sultan as the patron of the arts caused the members of the field (e.g. writers, publishers, book sellers) to be mostly left to their own devices to sustain the literary market. As more and more publishing houses emerged at this particular juncture in Ottoman literary history despite Abdul Hamid II's harsh censorship policies, definitions of authorship increasingly polarized into two major 'writerly categories', insinuated by Ahmet Cemil's observations above. This paper explores the contrast between these two new categories of participation in the literary world, i.e. 'writing for much-needed income' and 'writing out of a higher existential urge' and highlights the causes and consequences of this polarization, which also came to impact authors of later generations in Turkey.
Along with the increasing visibility of non-Western literatures in the Euroamerican academia duri... more Along with the increasing visibility of non-Western literatures in the Euroamerican academia during the past few decades, an increasing number of studies on Ottoman Turkish literature appeared in English, a great majority of which were written by scholars of Turkish descent, who, nonetheless, have been trained in other (mostly Western) national literatures, and who mostly received their education in the United States or Western Europe. Even though these scholars also occasionally wrote in Turkish, their work unexceptionally responded to global literary trends, and addressed itself to an audience familiar with the major discussions within the field of Comparative Literature. Further fueled by a new level of popularity with Orhan Pamuk's international recognition as the Nobel Laureate in Literature in 2006, these scholars carved out a remarkable space for Turkish literature within the Western literary academe.
While this has been a very exciting development, I argue that it has introduced an unhealthy disconnect into the general study of Turkish literature, as the increasing presence of Turkish literary studies in the Euroamerican academia has been carried out through a deliberate self-contradistinction from the literary scholarship in Turkey. This was because the above-mentioned group of non-expert scholars of Turkish descent felt that the “locally-produced” scholarship of Turkish literature was too nationalistic, technical and theoretically-weak. As a result of this, they relied heavily on Western-origined literary theories, instead of paying the necessary attention to the internal dynamics of “theorizing” literature in both imperial and republican Turkey. This paper will analyze the causes and effects of this disconnect and suggest new ways of tackling Turkish literature within the larger field of Comparative Literature.
This paper investigates the relationship between the emotion of envy, the central position of com... more This paper investigates the relationship between the emotion of envy, the central position of commodities and the new definitions of literary self as they are manifested in Halid Ziya's turn-of-the-century novel, Mai ve Siyah (serialized in 1896-7). Envy is a central emotion in this novel, where the protagonist, Ahmed Cemil, often relates to the outside world through unconscious/repressed yet acute observations of what others have that he does not. It is used, not only as an element of the plot but also as a literary and stylistic medium in the novel, a major regulator that informs major turning points in the storyline. In other words, the sequences in the novel are paced in accordance with the oscillations in Ahmed Cemil's psychological states that revolve around 'envy' and that eventually cause him to unhappily exile himself to an eastern province of the empire when all his dreams fall apart.
The objects of 'desire', as the major fueling force behind this emotion, keep changing throughout and range from clothing and accessories, to decorations, furniture and books. In fact, commodities hold a particular significance in this novel not only as objects of Ahmed Cemil's desire, but also as crucial elements that define his personality. He conceptualizes happiness as being closely connected with private ownership. As a young man, he recalls his joy over the new house his father bought in Sultanahmet when he was a child; years later, he dreams of becoming a successful literary man through the ownership of a publishing house, a carriage and eyeglasses. He catches himself becoming envious of the libraries and new books that his best friend could easily buy thanks to his unlimited funds. His aspiration of becoming a renowned poet always goes hand-in-hand with the dreams of surrounding objects of luxury and expensive furniture. He brigtens a regular day by touching the smooth texture of clothes in Bon Marche, sees the litography machine as his “most unique asset,” and often converses with the objects in his room to express his innermost feelings. Mai ve Siyah thus calls for a close analysis of the role played by commodities and their relation to envy as an emotion, which will in turn tell us about the ways in which the literary self has been defined in the late-Ottoman imperial capital.
During the past few decades, an increasing number of studies on Turkish literature appeared in En... more During the past few decades, an increasing number of studies on Turkish literature appeared in English, written by scholars whose main training are in other (mostly Western) national literatures or in Comparative Literature and who mostly received their education in the United States (or, occasionally, in the United Kingdom). Even though these scholars also write in Turkish, their work unexceptionally responds to global literary trends and speaks to an international audience.
Through an analysis of works by two such scholars, Jale Parla and Azade Seyhan, I argue that, even though it has certainly been an exciting development in that it entails a reconsideration of Turkish literature as part of global literary studies, this thread of scholarship created a number of problems because (1) it is West-centric in its acclaimed legacy and theoretical orientations: it often positions itself in diametric opposition against, in hostility towards, and in complete negligence of the history of literary scholarship in Turkey; (2) it is “non-textual”: it adopts an indifferent or even discouraging stance towards the study of Ottoman Turkish, Arabic and Persian, and a textual approach enabled by the knowledge of those languages; (3) it is “non-contextual,” or context-insensitive: it remains apathetic to the developments in Turkish historiography; it thus misses the increasingly nuanced body of literature in this field, causing it to posit antiquated approaches towards Ottoman history. As a result, while seemingly innovative, this type of scholarship often becomes conservative in its general stance towards its own object of study.
Dissatisfied and frustrated with the censorship regimen established by the Ottoman sultan Abdülha... more Dissatisfied and frustrated with the censorship regimen established by the Ottoman sultan Abdülhamid II, Halid Ziya (Uşaklıgil) (1867-1945), a well-canonized litterateur of the late-Ottoman Empire, wrote a novel, titled Mai ve Siyah (Blue and Black, 1897), depicting the life of a young man who strives to be a successful poet but fails miserably in the end, both in his career and personal life. The protagonist's failure, stemming from his unsympathetic surroundings rather than his own incompetence, constitutes a channel for Halid Ziya to express, in very implicit terms, his discontent with the tight control of the press and as with the predominance of outdated literary values. The writing of this particular novel was, in fact, such an insatiable urge for its author that it “deprived [him] of tranquility, with an absolute necessity to be born.” (from H.Z.'s memoirs)
Following its serialized publication in the Servet-i Fünun (The Wealth of Knowledge) journal, the self-censoring author managed to escape the keen eyes of government censorship. Yet Mai ve Siyah became part of a wave of heated discussion on the directions that literature (and poetry, in particular) should take in relation to the impact of the West and to the local literary heritage. The novel was criticized in terms of both its gloomy representation of the literary sphere of its time, and for its subscription to a highly elitist narrative language. Known as the “dekadanlar” (decadents) controversy, named after an accusation directed by the famous Ahmed Midhat Efendi at the Servet-i Fünun writers and poets, the discussion seems to have divided litterateurs and intellectuals into opposing camps.
In this presentation, I will analyze the “literary field” in the Ottoman capital during the last decade of the nineteenth century, which Mai ve Siyah both was generated within, and takes as its subject. The term “literary field,” coined by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, allows literary scholars to incorporate social, economic, political and other historically significant factors into their analyses, without lapsing into the reductionism of a “historian's approach” towards literature. Having a novel as the starting point for such an attempt to overcome the disciplinary divide will, in fact, not only prevent an often-seen isolation of the literary work from the environment of its production but it will also caution historians against a crude interpretation of fiction as a mirror of reality.
In 1826, a twenty-four year old Rifa’a al-Tahtawi was among the first students sent to France by ... more In 1826, a twenty-four year old Rifa’a al-Tahtawi was among the first students sent to France by Muhammad ‘Ali (Mehmet Ali Pasha) in an attempt to reform the educational system in Egypt. Encouraged by his mentor Shaykh Hassan al-Attar, al-Tahtawi sailed to Marseilles, then went to Paris and spent the next five years there. His travelogue, Takhlis al-ibriz ‘ila talkhis Bariz (The extraction of pure cold towards the abridgment of Paris) was published in 1834, a few years following his return and soon after, was translated into Turkish upon the request of a thoroughly impressed Muhammad ‘Ali. The Turkish translation appeared in 1839, as a publication of the government press (al-matba’a al-amiriyya) in Bulaq.
As Daniel Newman remarks in his preface to the translation of the book into English, the timing of the translation is interesting given that the Ottoman capital was in the midst of a wave of reformations introduced by the government. As a matter of fact, the Hatt-i Sharif of Gulhane, marking the beginning of the Tanzimat was proclaimed that very year. The copies of Takhlis in Turkish, sent to Constantinople upon Muhammed ‘Ali’s order, were hence met with great interest from the Sublime Porte as one of the first comprehensive accounts of European society and culture.
A year later, another travelogue, this time written by Mustafa Sami Efendi appeared in Constantinople, following the sefaratname (the book of embassy) tradition of Yirmisekiz Mehmet Çelebi, the ambassador in France during the early eighteenth century. Its author was a fervent supporter of Mustafa Reşid Pasha’s policies, hence of the Tanzimat Edict. Yet, while al-Tahtawi’s account has been praised and given a significant place in the developments of modern Arab social thought, Mustafa Sami was often mocked by his contemporaries for his exaggerated admiration of the West. This paper will explore the possibilities to compare the ways in which the mentioned works were presented and perceived in their respective contexts in an attempt to establish a basis for the comparative study of the Tanzimat and Nahda movements that were developing during the same period, one in the imperial center, and the other in its provinces.
With thirty-five novels, in addition to his writings in other genres and his essays on a variety ... more With thirty-five novels, in addition to his writings in other genres and his essays on a variety of topics ranging from philosophy to pedagogy and decorum, Ahmet Mithat Efendi was by far the most prolific writer of the Tanzimat period, justifying the appellation often attributed to him, the “writing machine.” He also was one of the most opinionated and actively engaged intellectuals in the literary discussions of his time. This paper will explore Ahmet Mithat’s involvement with one of the most controversial debates of Tanzimat, the one on romanticism versus realism, through a close-reading of his novel Müşahedat (Observations) using the theoretical framework provided by Gérard Genette in his work Paratexts: thresholds of interpretation.
The contention that was carried out through the notions of “fiction,” “imagination,” “reality,” and “historicity,” became quite ubiquitous in literary discussions of the era. The evident tension between these terms representing reality and fictionality resulted from the significant tension between “moralism” and the concerns of representing reality as it was. Ahmet Mithat, as the moralist par excellence of the time, zealously defended romanticism in his critical writings. Yet, it is difficult to argue that he consistently kept his position as a defender of romanticism, since, in his fictional works, he often positioned himself as a simple editor recounting what he had “heard” from others, or as someone who had been inspired by “real events.” This ostensible contradiction indicates the intricate ways in which the concepts of “reality” and of “imagination” merged in the late Ottoman literary context.
"The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed significant novelties in the literary scene ... more "The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed significant novelties in the literary scene of Istanbul, the capital of a dissolving empire, mostly as a reflection of the more inclusive attempts at societal change. Namik Kemal, a highly prominent figure of this period’s intelligentsia, actively participated in the debates on cultural transformation and gave in-depth thought on the direction Turkish literature should take. His oeuvre, as a result, mirrors the confusions, anxieties, and self-questioning pertaining to Tanzimat (Reformation) era intellectuals, who found themselves in a struggle to coalesce what can be called two different conditions of literary aesthetics, the novel and the Ottoman classical poetry being the two genres that constitute their respective main axes.
This paper looks into the introductory chapter of Kemal’s renowned novel Intibah (Awakening, 1876) with an aim to comprehend the ways in which writers of the time, who have been mostly trained within the Ottoman classical tradition, were handling this relatively new state of literary being. It is indeed interesting to note that, in Intibah, Kemal more or less replicates the general narrative structures and allegorical reservoir of classical literature in order to emphasize its outdated status. However, while utilizing the very target of his criticism to overcome it and create a new (and more Westernized) literary environment he often falls back into a seemingly inevitable reproduction of what he disparages, oscillating between a eulogy of an antiquated past and a ridicule of a despised history.
In its effort to make sense of this puzzlingly complicated state of mind, this paper consciously avoids recourse to the simplistic view of this transformation as the encounter of two unchanging literary traditions, separated through rigid binaries, such as East/West, old/new, or tradition/modernity. Rather, it recognizes the internal progression of both, as well as the historicity of their interaction, and reflects on the dynamics of interliterary influence, imitation and appropriation in relation to the text in hand. By looking at this text that is deemed to be representative of its context through theories of intertextuality, the paper in fact endeavors not only to formulate a sophisticated approach that would to justice to the complexity of similar Tanzimat texts, but also to set light on post-Republican and contemporary perceptions of Ottoman classical literature."
Fiction often transcends what non-fiction can disclose on the social reality of a certain period.... more Fiction often transcends what non-fiction can disclose on the social reality of a certain period. And clothes, as the most immediate manifestation of a particular character’s identity, add to this revelatory potential of the fictional world. This paper looks, with the mentioned connections in mind, at Halid Ziya’s turn-of-the-century novel Aşk-ı Memnu (The Illicit Love), which is often perceived to be one of the founding blocks of the Turkish novel. More specifically, it focuses on the role of clothing in shaping the relationships between the two female protagonists, using the theoretical framework provided by René Girard in Deceit, desire and the novel: self and other in literary structure. Through this reconsideration of its major dynamics, the paper investigates different ways of positioning the century-old novel in relation to its cultural context, and hence, responds to existing criticism that tends to see it as divorced from the social reality of its time.
Books by Zeynep Seviner
Bu kitabın başlangıç fikri, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Türk Dili ve Edebiyatı Bölümü'nün 5-7 Mayıs 200... more Bu kitabın başlangıç fikri, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Türk Dili ve Edebiyatı Bölümü'nün 5-7 Mayıs 2004'te düzenlediği bir sempozyumda ortaya çıktı. Sempozyum bildirilerinden yola çıkılarak oluşturulan makalelerin, "anlatı", "toplumsal cinsiyet", "mekan" ve "edebiyat tarihi" konularına göre gruplanmasıyla bu kitap oluştu. Bu kitap, öncelikle Ahmet Mithat, ancak aynı zamanda tüm bir Tanzimat dönemi edebiyatı ve modern edebiyatın kuruluşu konularında yeni ve verimli bir ilgiye yol açmayı hedefliyor. Kitabın hedef kitlesi önce Türk edebiyatı alanında çalışan araştırmacı ve öğrenciler, sonra beşeri bilimlerin diğer alanlarından okurlar olmakla birlikte, okuma eylemini ciddiye alan her alandan okuru da kapsamaktı. Bunu da yapmamak herhalde modern Türk okurlarının ilk öğretmeni olan Ahmet Mithat Efendi'ye ihanet etmek olurdu. Onu okumaya ve anlamaya yönelik bu kitap, onun pek çok eserini başlatırken kullandığı "Merhaba Ey Okur!" hitabına öykünerek, ona ses vermeyi amaçlıyor; "Merhaba Ey Muharrir!"
Zeynep Seviner'in Araba Sevdası'nın Eleştirel Basımı üzerine Journal of Ottoman and Turkish Studi... more Zeynep Seviner'in Araba Sevdası'nın Eleştirel Basımı üzerine Journal of Ottoman and Turkish Studies'de çıkan değerlendirmesi.
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Papers by Zeynep Seviner
Conference Presentations by Zeynep Seviner
This irony, I argue, is a major consequence of certain transformations within the literary field at this particular juncture of Ottoman literary history. During the 1890s, first, the fast growth of print capitalism allowed the fast multiplication of printing houses in the imperial capital, and second, the decreasing importance of the sultan as the patron of the arts caused the members of the field (e.g. writers, publishers, book sellers) to be mostly left to their own devices to sustain the literary market. As more and more publishing houses emerged at this particular juncture in Ottoman literary history despite Abdul Hamid II's harsh censorship policies, definitions of authorship increasingly polarized into two major 'writerly categories', insinuated by Ahmet Cemil's observations above. This paper explores the contrast between these two new categories of participation in the literary world, i.e. 'writing for much-needed income' and 'writing out of a higher existential urge' and highlights the causes and consequences of this polarization, which also came to impact authors of later generations in Turkey.
While this has been a very exciting development, I argue that it has introduced an unhealthy disconnect into the general study of Turkish literature, as the increasing presence of Turkish literary studies in the Euroamerican academia has been carried out through a deliberate self-contradistinction from the literary scholarship in Turkey. This was because the above-mentioned group of non-expert scholars of Turkish descent felt that the “locally-produced” scholarship of Turkish literature was too nationalistic, technical and theoretically-weak. As a result of this, they relied heavily on Western-origined literary theories, instead of paying the necessary attention to the internal dynamics of “theorizing” literature in both imperial and republican Turkey. This paper will analyze the causes and effects of this disconnect and suggest new ways of tackling Turkish literature within the larger field of Comparative Literature.
The objects of 'desire', as the major fueling force behind this emotion, keep changing throughout and range from clothing and accessories, to decorations, furniture and books. In fact, commodities hold a particular significance in this novel not only as objects of Ahmed Cemil's desire, but also as crucial elements that define his personality. He conceptualizes happiness as being closely connected with private ownership. As a young man, he recalls his joy over the new house his father bought in Sultanahmet when he was a child; years later, he dreams of becoming a successful literary man through the ownership of a publishing house, a carriage and eyeglasses. He catches himself becoming envious of the libraries and new books that his best friend could easily buy thanks to his unlimited funds. His aspiration of becoming a renowned poet always goes hand-in-hand with the dreams of surrounding objects of luxury and expensive furniture. He brigtens a regular day by touching the smooth texture of clothes in Bon Marche, sees the litography machine as his “most unique asset,” and often converses with the objects in his room to express his innermost feelings. Mai ve Siyah thus calls for a close analysis of the role played by commodities and their relation to envy as an emotion, which will in turn tell us about the ways in which the literary self has been defined in the late-Ottoman imperial capital.
Through an analysis of works by two such scholars, Jale Parla and Azade Seyhan, I argue that, even though it has certainly been an exciting development in that it entails a reconsideration of Turkish literature as part of global literary studies, this thread of scholarship created a number of problems because (1) it is West-centric in its acclaimed legacy and theoretical orientations: it often positions itself in diametric opposition against, in hostility towards, and in complete negligence of the history of literary scholarship in Turkey; (2) it is “non-textual”: it adopts an indifferent or even discouraging stance towards the study of Ottoman Turkish, Arabic and Persian, and a textual approach enabled by the knowledge of those languages; (3) it is “non-contextual,” or context-insensitive: it remains apathetic to the developments in Turkish historiography; it thus misses the increasingly nuanced body of literature in this field, causing it to posit antiquated approaches towards Ottoman history. As a result, while seemingly innovative, this type of scholarship often becomes conservative in its general stance towards its own object of study.
Following its serialized publication in the Servet-i Fünun (The Wealth of Knowledge) journal, the self-censoring author managed to escape the keen eyes of government censorship. Yet Mai ve Siyah became part of a wave of heated discussion on the directions that literature (and poetry, in particular) should take in relation to the impact of the West and to the local literary heritage. The novel was criticized in terms of both its gloomy representation of the literary sphere of its time, and for its subscription to a highly elitist narrative language. Known as the “dekadanlar” (decadents) controversy, named after an accusation directed by the famous Ahmed Midhat Efendi at the Servet-i Fünun writers and poets, the discussion seems to have divided litterateurs and intellectuals into opposing camps.
In this presentation, I will analyze the “literary field” in the Ottoman capital during the last decade of the nineteenth century, which Mai ve Siyah both was generated within, and takes as its subject. The term “literary field,” coined by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, allows literary scholars to incorporate social, economic, political and other historically significant factors into their analyses, without lapsing into the reductionism of a “historian's approach” towards literature. Having a novel as the starting point for such an attempt to overcome the disciplinary divide will, in fact, not only prevent an often-seen isolation of the literary work from the environment of its production but it will also caution historians against a crude interpretation of fiction as a mirror of reality.
As Daniel Newman remarks in his preface to the translation of the book into English, the timing of the translation is interesting given that the Ottoman capital was in the midst of a wave of reformations introduced by the government. As a matter of fact, the Hatt-i Sharif of Gulhane, marking the beginning of the Tanzimat was proclaimed that very year. The copies of Takhlis in Turkish, sent to Constantinople upon Muhammed ‘Ali’s order, were hence met with great interest from the Sublime Porte as one of the first comprehensive accounts of European society and culture.
A year later, another travelogue, this time written by Mustafa Sami Efendi appeared in Constantinople, following the sefaratname (the book of embassy) tradition of Yirmisekiz Mehmet Çelebi, the ambassador in France during the early eighteenth century. Its author was a fervent supporter of Mustafa Reşid Pasha’s policies, hence of the Tanzimat Edict. Yet, while al-Tahtawi’s account has been praised and given a significant place in the developments of modern Arab social thought, Mustafa Sami was often mocked by his contemporaries for his exaggerated admiration of the West. This paper will explore the possibilities to compare the ways in which the mentioned works were presented and perceived in their respective contexts in an attempt to establish a basis for the comparative study of the Tanzimat and Nahda movements that were developing during the same period, one in the imperial center, and the other in its provinces.
The contention that was carried out through the notions of “fiction,” “imagination,” “reality,” and “historicity,” became quite ubiquitous in literary discussions of the era. The evident tension between these terms representing reality and fictionality resulted from the significant tension between “moralism” and the concerns of representing reality as it was. Ahmet Mithat, as the moralist par excellence of the time, zealously defended romanticism in his critical writings. Yet, it is difficult to argue that he consistently kept his position as a defender of romanticism, since, in his fictional works, he often positioned himself as a simple editor recounting what he had “heard” from others, or as someone who had been inspired by “real events.” This ostensible contradiction indicates the intricate ways in which the concepts of “reality” and of “imagination” merged in the late Ottoman literary context.
This paper looks into the introductory chapter of Kemal’s renowned novel Intibah (Awakening, 1876) with an aim to comprehend the ways in which writers of the time, who have been mostly trained within the Ottoman classical tradition, were handling this relatively new state of literary being. It is indeed interesting to note that, in Intibah, Kemal more or less replicates the general narrative structures and allegorical reservoir of classical literature in order to emphasize its outdated status. However, while utilizing the very target of his criticism to overcome it and create a new (and more Westernized) literary environment he often falls back into a seemingly inevitable reproduction of what he disparages, oscillating between a eulogy of an antiquated past and a ridicule of a despised history.
In its effort to make sense of this puzzlingly complicated state of mind, this paper consciously avoids recourse to the simplistic view of this transformation as the encounter of two unchanging literary traditions, separated through rigid binaries, such as East/West, old/new, or tradition/modernity. Rather, it recognizes the internal progression of both, as well as the historicity of their interaction, and reflects on the dynamics of interliterary influence, imitation and appropriation in relation to the text in hand. By looking at this text that is deemed to be representative of its context through theories of intertextuality, the paper in fact endeavors not only to formulate a sophisticated approach that would to justice to the complexity of similar Tanzimat texts, but also to set light on post-Republican and contemporary perceptions of Ottoman classical literature."
Books by Zeynep Seviner
This irony, I argue, is a major consequence of certain transformations within the literary field at this particular juncture of Ottoman literary history. During the 1890s, first, the fast growth of print capitalism allowed the fast multiplication of printing houses in the imperial capital, and second, the decreasing importance of the sultan as the patron of the arts caused the members of the field (e.g. writers, publishers, book sellers) to be mostly left to their own devices to sustain the literary market. As more and more publishing houses emerged at this particular juncture in Ottoman literary history despite Abdul Hamid II's harsh censorship policies, definitions of authorship increasingly polarized into two major 'writerly categories', insinuated by Ahmet Cemil's observations above. This paper explores the contrast between these two new categories of participation in the literary world, i.e. 'writing for much-needed income' and 'writing out of a higher existential urge' and highlights the causes and consequences of this polarization, which also came to impact authors of later generations in Turkey.
While this has been a very exciting development, I argue that it has introduced an unhealthy disconnect into the general study of Turkish literature, as the increasing presence of Turkish literary studies in the Euroamerican academia has been carried out through a deliberate self-contradistinction from the literary scholarship in Turkey. This was because the above-mentioned group of non-expert scholars of Turkish descent felt that the “locally-produced” scholarship of Turkish literature was too nationalistic, technical and theoretically-weak. As a result of this, they relied heavily on Western-origined literary theories, instead of paying the necessary attention to the internal dynamics of “theorizing” literature in both imperial and republican Turkey. This paper will analyze the causes and effects of this disconnect and suggest new ways of tackling Turkish literature within the larger field of Comparative Literature.
The objects of 'desire', as the major fueling force behind this emotion, keep changing throughout and range from clothing and accessories, to decorations, furniture and books. In fact, commodities hold a particular significance in this novel not only as objects of Ahmed Cemil's desire, but also as crucial elements that define his personality. He conceptualizes happiness as being closely connected with private ownership. As a young man, he recalls his joy over the new house his father bought in Sultanahmet when he was a child; years later, he dreams of becoming a successful literary man through the ownership of a publishing house, a carriage and eyeglasses. He catches himself becoming envious of the libraries and new books that his best friend could easily buy thanks to his unlimited funds. His aspiration of becoming a renowned poet always goes hand-in-hand with the dreams of surrounding objects of luxury and expensive furniture. He brigtens a regular day by touching the smooth texture of clothes in Bon Marche, sees the litography machine as his “most unique asset,” and often converses with the objects in his room to express his innermost feelings. Mai ve Siyah thus calls for a close analysis of the role played by commodities and their relation to envy as an emotion, which will in turn tell us about the ways in which the literary self has been defined in the late-Ottoman imperial capital.
Through an analysis of works by two such scholars, Jale Parla and Azade Seyhan, I argue that, even though it has certainly been an exciting development in that it entails a reconsideration of Turkish literature as part of global literary studies, this thread of scholarship created a number of problems because (1) it is West-centric in its acclaimed legacy and theoretical orientations: it often positions itself in diametric opposition against, in hostility towards, and in complete negligence of the history of literary scholarship in Turkey; (2) it is “non-textual”: it adopts an indifferent or even discouraging stance towards the study of Ottoman Turkish, Arabic and Persian, and a textual approach enabled by the knowledge of those languages; (3) it is “non-contextual,” or context-insensitive: it remains apathetic to the developments in Turkish historiography; it thus misses the increasingly nuanced body of literature in this field, causing it to posit antiquated approaches towards Ottoman history. As a result, while seemingly innovative, this type of scholarship often becomes conservative in its general stance towards its own object of study.
Following its serialized publication in the Servet-i Fünun (The Wealth of Knowledge) journal, the self-censoring author managed to escape the keen eyes of government censorship. Yet Mai ve Siyah became part of a wave of heated discussion on the directions that literature (and poetry, in particular) should take in relation to the impact of the West and to the local literary heritage. The novel was criticized in terms of both its gloomy representation of the literary sphere of its time, and for its subscription to a highly elitist narrative language. Known as the “dekadanlar” (decadents) controversy, named after an accusation directed by the famous Ahmed Midhat Efendi at the Servet-i Fünun writers and poets, the discussion seems to have divided litterateurs and intellectuals into opposing camps.
In this presentation, I will analyze the “literary field” in the Ottoman capital during the last decade of the nineteenth century, which Mai ve Siyah both was generated within, and takes as its subject. The term “literary field,” coined by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, allows literary scholars to incorporate social, economic, political and other historically significant factors into their analyses, without lapsing into the reductionism of a “historian's approach” towards literature. Having a novel as the starting point for such an attempt to overcome the disciplinary divide will, in fact, not only prevent an often-seen isolation of the literary work from the environment of its production but it will also caution historians against a crude interpretation of fiction as a mirror of reality.
As Daniel Newman remarks in his preface to the translation of the book into English, the timing of the translation is interesting given that the Ottoman capital was in the midst of a wave of reformations introduced by the government. As a matter of fact, the Hatt-i Sharif of Gulhane, marking the beginning of the Tanzimat was proclaimed that very year. The copies of Takhlis in Turkish, sent to Constantinople upon Muhammed ‘Ali’s order, were hence met with great interest from the Sublime Porte as one of the first comprehensive accounts of European society and culture.
A year later, another travelogue, this time written by Mustafa Sami Efendi appeared in Constantinople, following the sefaratname (the book of embassy) tradition of Yirmisekiz Mehmet Çelebi, the ambassador in France during the early eighteenth century. Its author was a fervent supporter of Mustafa Reşid Pasha’s policies, hence of the Tanzimat Edict. Yet, while al-Tahtawi’s account has been praised and given a significant place in the developments of modern Arab social thought, Mustafa Sami was often mocked by his contemporaries for his exaggerated admiration of the West. This paper will explore the possibilities to compare the ways in which the mentioned works were presented and perceived in their respective contexts in an attempt to establish a basis for the comparative study of the Tanzimat and Nahda movements that were developing during the same period, one in the imperial center, and the other in its provinces.
The contention that was carried out through the notions of “fiction,” “imagination,” “reality,” and “historicity,” became quite ubiquitous in literary discussions of the era. The evident tension between these terms representing reality and fictionality resulted from the significant tension between “moralism” and the concerns of representing reality as it was. Ahmet Mithat, as the moralist par excellence of the time, zealously defended romanticism in his critical writings. Yet, it is difficult to argue that he consistently kept his position as a defender of romanticism, since, in his fictional works, he often positioned himself as a simple editor recounting what he had “heard” from others, or as someone who had been inspired by “real events.” This ostensible contradiction indicates the intricate ways in which the concepts of “reality” and of “imagination” merged in the late Ottoman literary context.
This paper looks into the introductory chapter of Kemal’s renowned novel Intibah (Awakening, 1876) with an aim to comprehend the ways in which writers of the time, who have been mostly trained within the Ottoman classical tradition, were handling this relatively new state of literary being. It is indeed interesting to note that, in Intibah, Kemal more or less replicates the general narrative structures and allegorical reservoir of classical literature in order to emphasize its outdated status. However, while utilizing the very target of his criticism to overcome it and create a new (and more Westernized) literary environment he often falls back into a seemingly inevitable reproduction of what he disparages, oscillating between a eulogy of an antiquated past and a ridicule of a despised history.
In its effort to make sense of this puzzlingly complicated state of mind, this paper consciously avoids recourse to the simplistic view of this transformation as the encounter of two unchanging literary traditions, separated through rigid binaries, such as East/West, old/new, or tradition/modernity. Rather, it recognizes the internal progression of both, as well as the historicity of their interaction, and reflects on the dynamics of interliterary influence, imitation and appropriation in relation to the text in hand. By looking at this text that is deemed to be representative of its context through theories of intertextuality, the paper in fact endeavors not only to formulate a sophisticated approach that would to justice to the complexity of similar Tanzimat texts, but also to set light on post-Republican and contemporary perceptions of Ottoman classical literature."