Seeing modernization through the eyes of periphery: a narratological analysis of Nazım Hikmet ran’s Memleketimden İnsan Manzaraları

Abstract

This thesis examines the narratological structure and characteristics of Nazım Hikmet Ran’s Memleketimden İnsan Manzaraları (Human Landscapes From My Country). The poem is a critique of Turkish modernization followed by the foundation of the Republic due to its ignorance towards the periphery, mainly, the peasants. Not only the events narrated in the text, but also how they are narrated embodies the ideology of the poem. The thesis aims at demonstrating the use of narratology in political and cultural readings not being limited to superficial theme analysis. Theoretically based on Mieke Bal’s practice of narratology in cultural readings, this thesis explores the possible ways of analyzing the narratology of the text in a way supporting Hikmet’s concern in writing the poem. The poem consists of five books and the thesis focuses on each of them considering a different theme and a different kind of analysis, including the change in the narrator-focalizor, the use of description, the space in relation to characters, the movie-like features of the text, and the snapshot effect created by the narration. The thesis also aims at taking the notion of self-narrative into the scope of analysis of narratology and use it in a way to offer a more individual-focused alternative for reading a non-western modernity to Gregory Jusdanis’ model of belatedness and Daryush Shayegan’s model of disfiguration.