An anti-epic story with an anti-hero: Puslu Kitalar Atlasi

Abstract

In this article, epic, which is a product of oral culture, is considered at length as a source which is transformed and consumed by novel, a product of written culture. Mikhail Bakhtin defines epic as an expired kind and points at novel as a promising one. In fact, the first impression about İhsan Oktay Anar's Puslu Kitalar Atlasi, which constitutes the subject of this article, is that this novel has little in common with the characteristics of an epic. However ten of the thirteen rules of an epic story, which are set by Axel Olric in his article titled "Epic Rules of Folk Tales", could be determined in this novel. This article claims that the novelist takes advantage of epic rules as a result of either a deliberate choice or an unconscious habit while creating characters and setting up dramatic structure and reproduces epic, which is considered as an expired kind.