Browsing by Subject "city"

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Open Access
Cemil Kavukçu öykücülüğünde kent, taşra ve modernlik
(2001) Demir, Hivren
One of the changes that occurred during the transition from orality to literacy was the rise of new styles of expression in literature. As a new genre the short story conributed to literacy as well. The role of modernization in the rise of the short story is significant proof of the relationship between social structure and literature. Hence, the first works in the field of the short story in Turkish literature were produced in the Tanzimat period in which the society began to go through a modernization process. From that time onward, many stories have been published, but in the 1990s the short story as a genre was paid much more attention than before especially because of the publication of many journals devoted to the genre alone. Cemil Kavukçu, whose works have been published since the 1980s, occupied an important place in the world of literature in the second half of the 1990s. Kavukçu has published collections of stories entitled Bilinen Bir Sokakta Kaybolmak (1997), Dört Duvar Beş Pencere (1999), Gemiler de Ağlarmış (2001), Pazar Güneşi (1983), Temmuz Suçlu (1990), Uzak Noktalara Doğru (1995) and Yalnız Uyuyanlar İçin (1996) as well as a novel, Dönüş (1998). The attitude of individuals living in cities and in provinces vis-à-vis the modern society is at the center of Kavukçu’s stories. As a writer of a society which is struggling to modernize, Kavukçu shows that modernity cannot be experienced in the same way everywhere. The sociological and psychological world of Kavukçu’s stories finds its corollary in his literary style. The role of intertextuality and fantastic elements in his stories and Kavukçu’s use of language are the basic signs of the consistency between his story-telling and his story world. Kavukçu’s short stories are open to new techniques on the one hand and follow the tradition on the other; his story-telling techniques suggest an important idea for literary criticism: A literary work should not be critically evaluated without considering the conditions under which that work emerges. Consequently, the criteria of success in the genre of the short story in Turkish literature should be based not only on the standards of Western literatures but also on the conditions and the tradition of short story writing in Turkish.
Open Access
Peyami Safa'nın romanlarında modernleşme ve mekân
(2009) Aksoy, Süreyya Elif
Peyami Safa (1899-1961), via his literary œuvre, also through his newspaper essays and research, had been a major contributor to the main arguments of Turkish conservative thought. His focus was on the tension between modernity and tradition. This study analyzes 11 novels of Peyami Safa, representative of each period in his novel writing, with a wiew to finding out the relations between the fictional places and the line of thought centering around modernization and the East-West question. The novels that are subject to scrutiny are as follows: Sözde Kızlar (The So-Called Girls, 1923), Şimşek (Lightning, 1923), Mahşer (Doomsday, 1924), Bir Akşamdı (It was a Night, 1924), Cânân (Cânan, 1925), Dokuzuncu Hariciye Koğuşu (Ninth Ward of Exterior Diseases, 1930), Fatih-Harbiye (Fatih-Harbiye, 1931), Bir Tereddüdün Romanı (The Novel of a Hesitation, 1933), Biz Đnsanlar (We Human Beings, 1959), Matmazel Noraliya’nın Koltuğu (The Armchair of Mademoiselle Noraliya, 1949) ve Yalnızız (We are Alone, 1951). In these novels, Safa views materialism, ardent pursuit of material gain and the satisfaction of sensual desires as the consequences of modernity and strongly condemns them. The study, carried on with the help of two research tools, namely “social space”, and “everyday life”, revealed that, urban places are depicted as the battle-ground for modern and traditional spaces. Modern urban spaces are presented as a threat to local culture and morality, whereas traditional spaces are subject to a Romantic idealization mechanism. However, in this binary opposition, Safa does not target the West as a totality, but aims at pointing to the specific ill consequences of modernity instead. To draw the line between the two, he insists on resting his arguments upon the anti-modernity arguments produced in the West itself, and he proposes a spiritual cooperation between Christianity and Islam against the materialistic inclinations of modernity. Hence, Safa questions the rhetoric of the “East-West opposition” and argues that the main conflict is between modernity and tradition, matter and spirit. Another insight is that, Safa’s transition from being an ardent supporter of modernization in the 1930s, towards functioning as the spokesman for tradition and religion in the 1950s, as well as the underlying conservative trait of his ideas, can be traced in his novels as well his essays and research. Despite his serious criticism against the consequences of modernity as experienced in the city and against the misconception and misinterpretation of modernity in certain circles, Peyami Safa does not totally exclude modernity from his universe. He rather displays an awareness about the features of modern city life, which enables modernity to pervade existence and to bring modernity and tradition into contact. The connection and communication between these two spaces are made possible mainly by modern transportation vehicles, such as cars and trams, as well as key characters who move in both modern and traditional spaces with equal effectiveness. So, in Safa’s fictional environment, modernity and tradition interact. Modernity transforms people’s perception and becomes an essential component of existence. Thus, the study suggests that Safa’s attention is not only on the opposition between East and West, or tradition and modernity, but on the relations between the two. This result is also supported by his conservative line of thought, found in his essays and non-fictional books, which clearly reveals his search for an ideal composition of preferable parts of the old and new, a position which makes him comparable to British conservative thought, as well as linking him to the postTanzimat (Reformation) Ottoman sentiments against rapid modernization, in the 19th century.