Week 4/4. Hafta: Questions

• 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 19^th 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 19^th 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?