Melancholy and hüzün in Orhan Pamuk's İstanbul

Abstract

This essay examines melancholy/hüzün in three overlapping contexts: as a historical condition of modernity, in aesthetic production, and as a cultural condition. In Pamuk's writing, melancholizing becomes a creative deviceto explore European and Islamic influences on historical and aesthetic connotations of hüzün that the city holds in its essence.