imitation, critique, systemization/synthesis, diffusion of ideas / taklid ve tenkid, yeni kelime ve terkipler, efkar-i umumiye
What do you make of Tanpinar’s conceptualization of the change in question? Is imitation seen as a defective response to Western influence or a necessary step to attain a new (and ideal) condition? Or neither of those, for that matter?
literature and life
How does Tanpinar see the relationship between literature and life? Does he claim that what he calls “old literature” lacked a connection to “life,” or could the kind of arguments he makes about this issue be formulated in a different way? What kind of role does literary pleasure play in this equation that involves literature and life, if any?
historiography and canonization: the issue of masterpieces
What is Tanpinar’s approach to the historiography of the 19th century Turkish literature? Does his selection of people, events or literary works seem arbitrary? What can be retrieved of his work on the issue of canonization? Can we think about this having Koprulu’s remarks on masterpieces in mind?
Eurocentrism; disciplinary approaches
What do you make those chapters in terms of their relation to the discipline of literary history? Do they occasionally seem to be a history of Ottoman Empire in the 19th century rather than a history of Turkish literature? Should the shift towards literature for the post-1856 period tell us something about Tanpinar’s underlying assumptions?
- Tanpinar, Ahmet Hamdi, “Garplilasma hareketine umumi bir bakis,” “XIX. asrin ilk yarisinda Turk edebiyati,” “Tanzimat Seneleri,” “Yeniligin Uc Buyuk Muharriri,” XIX. asir Turk edebiyati tarihi, Istanbul: Yapi Kredi Yayinlari, 2006.
“World literature without a hyphen: towards a typology of literary systems”
New Left Review 54, November-December 2008, pp.87-100
Outline:
-Introduction: “World” as an adjective versus “world” as a noun – Existing theories in social sciences and humanities
-Analysis and critique of two specific models: Moretti and Casanova
-Offering an alternative organizing principle: A six-moded structure that accounts for the relationship between literatures and environments
-Conclusion: Final structural suggestions
Class discussion:
The main points covered in the short discussion of this article mostly dealt with the ways in which Beecroft suggests a new approach to literature and, accordingly, the efficiency of his categorizations. As I will point out more in detail in the “Criticism” section, it may be argued that, with his six pairing categories, he has relapsed into Wallerstein’s structure where there are three main systems. However, the recognition of dissimilar but chronologically overlapping literary categories or rather modes of literary interaction certainly leaves more room for more argumentative flexibility and hence creates a theoretical environment where simplistic –and mostly Eurocentric approaches to “world literature” can be more easily and meaningfully challenged. On a very personal note, I like the linguistic/terminological approach to the problem of literary Eurocentrism.
Summary:
In his endeavor to come up with a much more encompassing definition of ‘literature’ in terms of both time and space covered, Beecroft takes on Wallerstein’s world-systems theory to point out to the problems within the current literary scholarship in its approach to the definition of literature. Wallerstein, like Beecroft, questions the relevance and “usefulness of the nation-state as the proper unit of analysis,” and suggests instead a historical approach, which allows him to describe three different ‘world-systems’ that have existed:
1) the mini-system of the pre-modern world, geographically limited in scope;
2) the world-empire, such as Rome or Han-dynasty China, ‘a large bureaucratic structure with a single political center and an axial division of labor, but multiple cultures’;
3) and a world-economy, such as that in place in modern times, which is ‘a large axial division of labor with multiple political centers and multiple cultures’. (87)
Nevertheless, Beecroft argues that Wallerstein falls into a power-dependent approach in his utilization of the word ‘world’ as a noun in the term ‘world-system’, a utilization that would, according to Beecroft, also explain “one of the unspoken assumptions most writers on world literature seem to have taken from Wallerstein, namely that world-literature (to restore the hyphen Wallerstein might demand) is not the sum total of the world’s literary production, but rather a world-system within which literature is produced and circulates.” (88)
Along with Wallerstein’s idea that there should be a power-center regulating the world-system, comes an “axial division of labor,” where the periphery is very much dependent on the center in terms of survival. In his objection to such a structure, Beecroft argues that the word ‘world’ should instead be used as an adjective in a way to include, within the definition of literature, all of the texts that have been composed as literature, that is, what he calls, as mentioned earlier, the sum total of the world’s literary production.
It is on those grounds that Beecroft undertakes a criticism of Pascale Casanova and Franco Moretti, accusing the former for “reserving higher-order and higher-value work for core cultures,” and the latter for “core specialists within the field of literary study (located, naturally, within the academic centers of those same core cultures).” (88) To be more precise, Beecroft criticizes Casanova for failing to account for the non-European world before 1945, thus, for being too limited both spatially and chronologically. Another shortcoming of Casanova’s approach for Beecroft is that she does not necessarily develop a critical approach towards the role of Paris as the literary capital of the world and the ultimate value-adder/recognizer for any literary work. As a matter of fact, her theory remains very much Euro-centric in her uncritical admission that “[p]eripheral production is only of value once recognized by the center.” (89)
As for Moretti, even though his theory is put forward as “a less innocent vision of the relationship between literary and economic systems,” (89) it is still centered around the core/periphery relations and is too genre-dependent. In other words, Moretti tries to come up with a systemization of world-literature by looking only into the major genres of the Western literary tradition, mainly the novel, and also to a certain extent, the sonnet. Beecroft, on the other hand, is in search for a much less reductionist approach to literature, since he thinks Moretti’s theory leaves out a remarkably big part of the world’s literary production, and is disturbingly simplistic in its vision of literary theory.
“In either case,” Beecroft remarks, “each of these models has the perhaps unintended effect of re-inscribing a hegemonic center, even as their avowed desire is to globalize literary studies.” (88) As a hegemony-free and genre-independent alternative to those two models, Beecroft suggests a six-moded structure as a possible classificatory approach to what he terms ‘world literature’, with an aim to grasp “the multiplicity of strategies used by literatures to relate to their political and economic environments,” and to “recognize the multiple centers and systems of cultural power.” (91) He suggests that “the shifting configuration of the relationship between literatures and environments forms the most useful object of study for a future ‘word literature without a hyphen’,” the central term ‘environment’ being borrowed from Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory. (92) Beecroft thinks of literatures as ‘subsystems’, which are encircled within ‘environments’ and which “recognize distinctions within their environments” but is only “selectively interconnected with [them].” (91, emphasis added)
The multiplication of categories certainly helps Beecroft’s theory as to appearing more careful about the easy simplifications and about the common tendency of a Eurocentric explication of ‘world-literature’. Indeed, he rightfully points out that “[p]rofound theoretical insights can and must come from the study of diverse literatures, rather than from the study of a core tradition or from the work of a dedicated class of theoreticians exempted from the cultural labor of textual analysis.” (91) However, his structure based on six categorical sections (i.e. epichoric, panchoric, cosmopolitan, vernacular, national and global) is not without some problems, as I will point out in the next section.
Criticism:
1) The sections interestingly seem to be better grasped in pairs; the epichoric text is most immediately related to the panchoric, whereas the cosmopolitan is best made sense of in relation to the vernacular; and finally, the concept of global literature is mainly based on the national. In that sense, it is possible to argue that Beecroft falls back into Wallerstein’s theory; in other words, a parallelism can be easily drawn with the latter’s three main historical categories and the former’s three paired sets; i.e. epichoric/panchoric, cosmopolitan/vernacular, and national/global. The only addition on Beecroft part is, in that case, the suggestion that those different categories might exist synchronically.
2) His appropriation of Luhmann’s terminology is vague and confusing. Beecroft poses “the relationship between literature and its environment,” as the main problem in relation to defining ‘world literature,’ and creates his categories based on this assumption; however, he does not elaborate the significance of this relationship, which seem to create a disturbing thematic shift between the first and the second part of the article.
3) His criticism of Casanova and Moretti’s theories, as much as it makes sense on the level of a debunking of West-centered approaches, seems to be simplistic and somewhat distorting. Not having read Casanova’s The World Republic of Letters, I find it hard to believe that she would be as naïve and non-critical of the structure she writes about as Beecroft presents her. When it comes to Moretti, on the other hand, Beecroft does not seem to beyond his ideas concerning the adoption of the novel genre by non-Western literatures and hence, he ends up replicating the center/periphery relation rather than debunking it. In fact, he admits that “the larger-scale absorption of European ideas of the nation and of national literature mirrors to some extent the absorption of the European literary form of the novel.” (98)
4) Beecroft’s model fails, in my opinion, to come up with a practical suggestion about the possible ways to go beyond the nation-state on an institutional level. The question of how we are to reorganize the literary academia on the basis of this new categorization remains indeed unanswered.
M. Fuad Koprulu, “Turk Edebiyati Tarihinde Usul” in Edebiyat Arastirmalari (Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1966), 3-47.
Gary Leiser's translation: Mehmed Fuad Koprulu, “Method in Turkish Literary History" Middle Eastern Literatures 11:1 (April, 2008): 55-84.
Outline:
I. Introduction
II. History
III. Literary History
IV. Relationship Between History and Literary History
V. Steps of Koprulu's Methodology
VI. Mission of a Literary Historian
Class Discussion:
Class discussion of the second week mostly focused on the structure of the article in order to lay out it and understand its main parts. Especially, the aspects of subjectivity and objectivity in Koprulu’s methodology were extensively discussed. In the following brief analysis, the issues raised in class are reviewed and reevaluated.
Reading Koprulu's “Usul”
In 1913, Mehmed Fuad Koprulu’s article “Method in Turkish Literary History" was published. For the first time, this article offered a systematic methodology to approaching Turkish literature from a scientific perspective. With its pioneering position in Turkish literary studies, this article proved to be very influential in that after its publication Fuad Koprulu was appointed, at a very young age, as the chair of the Turkish literature department at Istanbul University, then the most prestigious Turkish university. By solely relying on this fact, it is possible to say that Koprulu’s article was welcomed by the academic circles of his time. Therefore, to analyze the ways in which Koprulu formulates his arguments will be a fruitful way to trace the early roots of Turkish literary studies.
I. Introduction In this well-organized article, Koprulu introduces, step by step, his method for Turkish literary history. Before proposing his own method, he first looks at the notions of science and methodology as they are employed in the various branches of science. Koprulu starts with positive sciences, and then passes on to social sciences. As a sub-branch of social sciences, he pays close attention to history and situates literary history under the discipline of history. In this way, Koprulu follows a deductive line of reasoning which can be formulated as follows: he starts off with the general framework of "science" and goes down to its particular sub-branches. Thus he presents literature as a field of scientific study without giving much thought to the often problematical relation between science and literature. Koprulu describes method in a general sense as “the path that the intellect must follow in order to arrive at truth” (55). According to him, it is the methods that have given way to the development of sciences. In line with his concern for scientificity, Koprulu starts with answering the following question: “what kind of a method one should follow in studying Turkish literature?” (56). What is indicative of Koprulu's discussion is that he aims to situate his discussion of Turkish literature within the broad context of scientific studies and methodologies. Although Koprulu does not discuss this relationship directly, through his deductive writing, he presents literary studies as a branch of scientific studies. On the other hand, although he does not question this relationship directly, he compares and contrasts the relation between history and literature in detail, and it is in this section that he acknowledges the following: the subject matter of literature differs from history in the sense that literature is primarily a form of art. So he formulates his methodology to be able to deal with art within a scientific framework. However he does not come up with a discussion of the relation between science and literature. Nevertheless Koprulu sets up a framework in which he presents the classification of sciences and, in a consistent manner, presents his method for studying Turkish literature. That being said, what I want to emphasize here is that Koprulu’s understanding of literature as a scientific discipline is different from the current approaches to literature as a sub-discipline of humanities. I should note, however, that this observation does not undermine in any way the integrity of Koprulu's thesis. In his intense introduction, in addition to his discussion of sciences, Koprulu also briefly describes the ways in which he organized the article. Although he quotes extensively from the views of Western scholars on literary history, he does not appropriate their methodologies directly into the Turkish literary studies. Instead, the article presents a critical discussion of the European scientific approaches. For example, according to Koprulu, Gustave Lanson’s study, which presents a methodology for the studies of literary history, does not contribute to the formation of his own methodology for studying Turkish literature and writes that “Turkish literature and French literature present enormous differences and contrasts with regard to origins, historical development and general trends” (56). On the other hand, Gary Leiser, the translator of the article, asserts repetitively that Koprulu’s article specifically discusses late 19th century French thought on literary studies and its applicability to the history of Turkish literature (53). In this regard, Leiser reduces the article to a Koprulu’s striving for an adaptation of French model of literary studies into Turkish literature. Whereas Koprulu formulates a methodology for studying Turkish literature in relation to various disciplines and various scholars, and it is this approach which shows the scope of his intellectual pursuits. II. History In the first section, Koprulu discuses history as a discipline, and analyzes its method, object of study and goals. Koprulu criticizes building up history on the basis of political events and ruling classes. . According to Koprulu, the study of history should not simply be based on political history and ruling class; rather, it should try to understand the majority of a society. In this section, Koprulu also criticizes Ottoman historiography for being ‘non-secular’. To him Ottoman historiography presents historical events as God's will. As an alternative to that kind of historiography, he suggests a secular historiography which seeks the causal relations in history.
III. Literary History
This section focuses on Turkish literary history. First Koprulu defines "a good historian of literature." According to his definition, “a good historian” is the one who can show in his/her analysis the transformations that Turkish spirit has undergone (65). An argument which begs the following questions: What is the Turkish spirit? How can a literary historian analyze it? The answer is embedded between the lines of the article. Koprulu talks about the absolute separation of court literature from popular literature because of the fact that court literature does not have any connection with the "popular spirit" (66-67). He also adds that court literature develops under Byzantine and Persian influences (65) and that it belongs to the elite class. It is clear that Koprulu does not much concern himself with studying court literature since he cannot link it to the "Turkish spirit". In line with these arguments, he also criticizes the literary canon which is based on masterpieces. According to Koprulu, most of the time masterpieces reflect the ruling class’ preferences, not that of the general public. So it can be said that Koprulu has a high opinion of popular or folk literature.
IV. Relationship Between History and Literary History
In line with the arguments presented in the first section, the second section analyzes history of literature as a sub-branch of the discipline called history. This section compares the subjects of both disciplines. Literature as a form of art differs from history in various ways, so Koprulu makes several remarks for the study of literature. He acknowledges the subjective sides of literary studies such as "literary taste" and personal tendencies, and suggests developing an awareness for the subjective side involved in studying a literary history. According to him, this awareness may be an opening for controlling subjectivity.
V. Steps of Koprulu's Methodology
In this section he offers a methodology, which consists of eight steps, in pursuing a literary study. In the first four steps, he mainly focuses on the textual studies, and, step by step, explains the preliminary bases of such a study. Later steps are mostly about the analysis of the text in relation to its author, context and other works.
VI. Mission of a Literary Historian
In the conclusion, Koprulu assigns a nationalist responsibility to the literary historians. In this section, there is a perceivable shift in Koprulu's approach, which is a shift from an analytical approach to a nationalistic approach imbued with the politics of his time.
Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar; Introduction to "19th Century Turkish Literary History"
The outline of the introduction is Introduction Palace Cikissizlik – language – poetic meter – genres Mentality Orneksizlik Prose
Questions that are raised in class to think about: Why does everybody write about Tanpinar but not about Koprulu? Can Koprulu set a model for us in order to understand Tanpinar? What is the biggest loophole in Tanpinar’s writing?
Introduction At the beginning of his introduction, Tanpinar gives a sense of what he will be arguing for the rest of the article by introducing the concept of duality with its relation to language and literary history. Even though he does not argue about the literary history in empirical sense as Mehmed Fuad Koprulu does, it is evident that he had been influenced and trained by Koprulu’s ideas on issues regarding the old literature. Tanpinar wrote “19th Century Turkish Literary History” in 1949, long time after the arguments on the old literature and modern Turkish literature had settled down among the early intellectuals.
Summary The article is built upon the ambiguities of palace life and its image that is reflected on the old literature. The concept of “resemblance” (Foucault: “Order of Things”), which Foucault underlines the importance of it as a source of knowledge in 16th century Western culture, is an applicable concept in order to understand the metaphor of palace in Ottoman knowledge of hierarchical order, which is reflected in the old literature. (p 27 top-down) Such absolute order is limited within the resemblance of things. Tanpinar sees such order is limited yet significant in its own production of the literature of its own time. Unlike Namik Kemal, Tanpinar recognizes the importance of images/metaphors in this old life and literature and how these images were meaningful yet limiting for the people within its own era. (cikissizlik) Foucault claims that “sixteenth-century (West) condemned itself to never knowing anything but the same thing, and to knowing that thing only at the unattainable end of an endless journey." (p 36). It is possible to make the same claim with Tanpinar’s understanding of mentality of the old literature. The belatedness and the incompetence of knowledge beyond the resemblances and metaphors is the biggest lack, sign of immaturity in the old literature according to Tanpinar and he condemns it. The rest of the paper deals with the Eastern and Western comparison, which I believe, is the weakest part of the article. Last but not least, Tanpinar goes back to his original lamentation, concern: why don’t we have prose writing?
Palace Tanpinar appropriately determines the role of images and their relation to the palace and the figure of ruler both in Ottoman society and Western society during Middle Ages and the Renaissance. (p 23) However, what he cannot seem to fully grasp is the transformation in the Western knowledge from this world of resemblance into the world of epistemological knowledge in order to compare it with belatedness of such knowledge in the old society and literature. Before deepening the argument of Western and Eastern comparison, which I will argue later on, it is important to look at what kind of relationship Tanpinar finds between this figurative language in the old literature and the society of that time. “this big art tradition, even though how figuratively it was talked back then, would reflect the social system that it was born from and existed in”. (p 26) This sealed, limited world of metaphors, folded in itself as Foucault would suggest, lacks the understanding of “originality” and “creativity” as the “modern” person would perceive. Such unoriginality comes from various channels such as religion, barrowed languages like Persian and Arabic, the problems of Islamic civilization according to Tanpinar, yet such generalizations fall apart when he starts comparing with the Western society. If Tanpinar persisted on his arguments on the change and transformation within the old society, which he gives the hints of such arguments but does not carry them forward; his argument would be more convincing. Even though he acknowledges the fact that Ottoman poetry searched for a change since 15th century, yet he insists on his argument by saying that the people could not change and their universal view remained the same. (p 37).
Mentality From this point on, Tanpinar’s comparison of Western and Eastern mentalities is based on the arguments of civilizations. The concept of “historicism” among other concepts Tanpinar argues how the Western civilization is developed and got rid of its “anachronistic” world-view. The biggest emphasis on this part is the role of mystic side of Islam (tasavvuf). First the sources of Western civilization is pointed out as ancient Greek and Latin languages and myths that feeds Classical Age is different from the Islamic civilization. Unfortunately, Tanpinar hastens in his judgements on such comparisons by iniquitously accusing the Islamic civilization being too “abstract” and “plain”. He returns back to his argument of the desire that the poets of 15th century to change the poetic system; yet cannot do it because of their mentality that is tied to Islam and the “Orient”. The feeling of “tragedy” lacks from the mentality of old literature because the society of this era lacks the training of “reality”. However, in his comparison Tanpinar makes the anachronistic mistake by comparing 15th century Ottoman Empire with 17th-18th century modernizing Western mentality. If Tanpinar did not neglect looking at the changes in “mesnevi”s during the end of 16th century and the beginning of 17th century, he would find more than a few exceptional poets that shows transformation within the old literature as well.
Orneksizlik Tanpinar finds the lack of genres as the biggest loophole and shows that this lacks come from non-existence of models for emergence of prose in the old literature. He argues the lack of drama comes from the lack of the concept of “first sin” in Christianity that led to confession and self-reflection in Western literature. This self-reflection that turns into one’s self is different from the sufistic unity, which is obsessed with the unity of the God instead of the self. The tragedy on the other hand is more about the development of humanistic critique in Western thought, which did not exist in Islamic civilization according to Tanpinar. Eventually he gives examples from social development in Western societies such as the rise of bourgeoisie and the arguments of men’s space and women’s space gives legitimate reasoning in his argument in order to show how these civilizations took different routes in their development. Yet the lack of empirical support on this second part of his essay and some generalizations makes his arguments shaky. Since there is no set of example for Ottoman poets in order to transform, Tanpinar assumes there was no change within the old literature whatsoever except couple of individual poets.
