Türkçe edebiyatta kolektif belleğin yansımaları

Abstract

In this study, entitled “Reflections of Collective Memory in Turkish Literature”, I argue that literary texts, specifically narratives, can function as a means of collective memory, and I take up the task of explaining how these texts reveal different aspects of collective memory. In order to ground this claim, I first present a survey of various ways in which collective memory has been conceptualized, and then settle the definition of collective memory that will be referred to throughout the study. In the second chapter, I explicate the relationship between collective memory and narrative by appeal to Jan Assmann's three-fold characterization that concern the narrativeness of figures of memory. I relate this three-fold characterization of memory figures, which consists of a concrete reference to time and place, a concrete reference to a group, and an independent capacity for reconstruction, to the constructive elements of literary texts. One possible answer to the question of how literary texts function as grounds on which memory unfolds is discussed in the third chapter, “Reading the Memory: A Methodological Attempt”. In this chapter, demonstrating why a literary text by its very nature is methodological, the need for a metamethod is called for, for further literary analyses. The metamethod, taking the ways in which narratives are formed and conveyed as objects of analysis, focuses directly on how, namely the method by which, literary texts adapt as memory narratives. In the fourth chapter, three narratives of Turkish literature, Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale (Mario Levi), The Encounter (Markar Esayan), and The Reflection (Seyit Alp) are analyzed as examples of how literary texts could relate to collective memory in various ways. These texts, as subjects of the literary analyses run in this study, demonstrate the reflections of collective memory in Turkish literature.