The Ideal of the West, the Reality of the East. Towards a New Poetics of Ottoman Modernity in the Novels of "Edebiyat-ı Cedide"

Abstract

The article deals with the late Ottoman literary movement of New Literature (Edebiyat-ı Cedide) and asks what new conceptions of East and West there emerged in the Ottoman-Turkish novel at the turn of the century. Based on that, it tries to outline the connections of the new poetics of the novel developed by Edebiyat-ı Cedide to the Ottoman modernization process. The underlying argument of the paper is that West and East appear in these novels more as two states of mind than physical entities, as two poles of consciousness. The West becomes an elaborately crafted metaphoric space, serving as a backdrop onto which the authors, influenced by Romantic ideals, project the wounded, fragmented consciousness of their heroes. The East, on the other hand, turns into an anti-ideal, symbolizing triviality and mediocrity of the localness, stifling the novelists’ dreams and desires and hindering them from being carried away by their poetic genius. We further suggest that despite the purely artistic ambitions of these authors, their writings vividly and accurately capture the problems and tensions arising from the cultural transformation of the Ottoman Empire.

Keywords

• Ottoman-Turkish novels
• Servet-i Fünun
• Edebiyat-ı Cedide
• East and West