Week 2/2. Hafta: Discussion

Main Reading:


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.

-Sevim