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3
modernizing world. Finally, the last chapter illustrates melancholy as the dominant sentiment in contemporary Turkish literature on Istanbul; yet, it also displays the convergence of melancholy with the uncanny and nostalgia in Turkish writers‘ ambiguous relationship to the modern. These three concepts are used as operative categories in the organization of the chapters. The purpose is to understand what it means to be modern through the reflections of the modern in a literary canon of an urban space, and to demonstrate the transformation of that literary canon in relation to the history of modernity. Mutually constructed, neither of these two concerns can fully ‗explain‘ the other, but can be used as alternative methods to the traditional approaches, employed in studies of modernity and orientalism. Reading the story of modernity from an oriental yet not too oriental setting challenges both the European-centered theories and the interpretation of alternative modernities in non-western geographies. Examination of the writings on Istanbul as an evolving canon in relation to the temporal frame of modernity, on the other hand, is a variation from the stabilized binary oppositions between East and West, modeled in orientalist studies.
Focusing on western travelogues, the first two chapters, respectively titled ―Uncanny Moments in Nineteenth-Century Travelogues on Constantinople,‖ and ―The Spectral Return to the ‗Beginning‘ in Constantinople,‖ examine a variety of texts from different periods and national traditions in order to demonstrate how Istanbul has carried a common image for the western traveler, despite its changing socio-political history over centuries. Although the chapters do not incorporate a comprehensive account of any singular text, the main argument in the first two chapters points out the uncanny as a
Object Description
| Title | Collective melancholy: Istanbul at the crossroads of history, space and memory |
| Author | Tekdemir, Hande |
| Author email | tekdemir@usc.edu; hande_tekdemir@yahoo.com |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | English |
| School | College of Letters, Arts and Sciences |
| Date defended/completed | 2008-08-06 |
| Date submitted | 2008 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2008-10-11 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Russett, Margaret |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Lloyd, David Norindr, Panivong |
| Abstract | This study draws on a historical perspective on the evolution of a certain form that I call the "Istanbul canon" in which the city has always been associated with loss. Tracing the genealogy of loss in the literary representations of Istanbul by both western and local writers in the past and the present, I explore how the various configurations of loss are related to the local context and to the history of modernity at large. The city's ambivalent history in this geography on the threshold, functions as a means to understand loss, concealed in the various spatio-temporal layers -- East and West, colonizer and the colonized, pre-modern and modern, -- within the history of modernity. My objective is to consider the cityscape as a template upon which modernity is projected as a subjective and fleeting experience, comprehended in both local and global terms, and critiqued accordingly. I focus on the uncanny as a recurrent characteristic of nineteenth-century travelogues, in which the traveler is unsettled by unexpectedly encountering the familiar within the unfamiliar terrain of Constantinople, while I consider the nostalgic renditions of modern travelogues and western detective fiction not only as reflections on the changes within the western literary canon about the city, but also as reactions against the modernizing world. Finally, the last chapter illustrates melancholy as the dominant sentiment in the contemporary Turkish literature on Istanbul; yet, it also displays the convergence of melancholy with the uncanny and nostalgia in Turkish writers' ambiguous relationship to the modern. |
| Keyword | melancholy; Istanbul; Orhan Pamuk; travel literature; detective fiction |
| Geographic subject (city or populated place) | Istanbul; Constantinople |
| Coverage date | after 1800 |
| Coverage era | Nineteenth Century; Twentieth Century |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m1656 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Tekdemir, Hande |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Filename | etd-Tekdemir-2357 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume26/etd-Tekdemir-2357.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 6 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | 3 modernizing world. Finally, the last chapter illustrates melancholy as the dominant sentiment in contemporary Turkish literature on Istanbul; yet, it also displays the convergence of melancholy with the uncanny and nostalgia in Turkish writers‘ ambiguous relationship to the modern. These three concepts are used as operative categories in the organization of the chapters. The purpose is to understand what it means to be modern through the reflections of the modern in a literary canon of an urban space, and to demonstrate the transformation of that literary canon in relation to the history of modernity. Mutually constructed, neither of these two concerns can fully ‗explain‘ the other, but can be used as alternative methods to the traditional approaches, employed in studies of modernity and orientalism. Reading the story of modernity from an oriental yet not too oriental setting challenges both the European-centered theories and the interpretation of alternative modernities in non-western geographies. Examination of the writings on Istanbul as an evolving canon in relation to the temporal frame of modernity, on the other hand, is a variation from the stabilized binary oppositions between East and West, modeled in orientalist studies. Focusing on western travelogues, the first two chapters, respectively titled ―Uncanny Moments in Nineteenth-Century Travelogues on Constantinople,‖ and ―The Spectral Return to the ‗Beginning‘ in Constantinople,‖ examine a variety of texts from different periods and national traditions in order to demonstrate how Istanbul has carried a common image for the western traveler, despite its changing socio-political history over centuries. Although the chapters do not incorporate a comprehensive account of any singular text, the main argument in the first two chapters points out the uncanny as a |
