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representations of the Orient, I limit my focus to nineteenth-century literary texts written specifically about Istanbul. Within Orientalism‘s spacious geography, Edward Said examines a body of European writing which helps shape the production of the ‗Eastern myth‘ by western narratives. This tradition has a history, which goes back as far as Homer and Aeschylus and still persists in contemporary society. As a perpetuator of this long history, the orientalist, regardless of his/her period or field of specialization, contributes to the creation of the Orient, which s/he then claims to represent. The orientalist assists in exacerbating a series of stereotypical images, as Europe (the West, the ‗self‘) being the rational, developed, superior, authentic, active and masculine; and The Orient (the East, the ‗other‘) being irrational, backward, inferior, inauthentic and feminine (8). This system is designed to promote European imperialism and colonialism.
The fact that orientalist texts produce a certain type of knowledge that is transformed into power over the Orient, is only tentatively taken for granted throughout my dissertation.3 Although especially the end of nineteenth century witnessed increasing pressure on the Ottoman Empire by the British and French, the relationship between Europe and the Ottomans did not really fulfill the criteria posited by Said in Orientalism. Since stereotypical representations of Turks and Turkey in western fiction have also been overly discussed, my work aims to further these discussions by interrogating what the Orient actually does to the Western traveler rather than what the West imposes on the
3 For representation of Turkey and Turks in western literature, see the following: Kamil Aydin, Images of Turkey in Western Literature.Huntingdon, UK:The Eothen Press, 1999. Jale Parla, The Eastern Question and the Fortunes of the Turkish Myth in England and France, Unpub. Diss. Massachusetts: Harvard University, 1978. Berna Moran, A Bibliography of English Publications About the Turks from the 15th Century to the 18th Century. Istanbul: Istanbul Univ. Press, 1964.
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 10 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | 7 representations of the Orient, I limit my focus to nineteenth-century literary texts written specifically about Istanbul. Within Orientalism‘s spacious geography, Edward Said examines a body of European writing which helps shape the production of the ‗Eastern myth‘ by western narratives. This tradition has a history, which goes back as far as Homer and Aeschylus and still persists in contemporary society. As a perpetuator of this long history, the orientalist, regardless of his/her period or field of specialization, contributes to the creation of the Orient, which s/he then claims to represent. The orientalist assists in exacerbating a series of stereotypical images, as Europe (the West, the ‗self‘) being the rational, developed, superior, authentic, active and masculine; and The Orient (the East, the ‗other‘) being irrational, backward, inferior, inauthentic and feminine (8). This system is designed to promote European imperialism and colonialism. The fact that orientalist texts produce a certain type of knowledge that is transformed into power over the Orient, is only tentatively taken for granted throughout my dissertation.3 Although especially the end of nineteenth century witnessed increasing pressure on the Ottoman Empire by the British and French, the relationship between Europe and the Ottomans did not really fulfill the criteria posited by Said in Orientalism. Since stereotypical representations of Turks and Turkey in western fiction have also been overly discussed, my work aims to further these discussions by interrogating what the Orient actually does to the Western traveler rather than what the West imposes on the 3 For representation of Turkey and Turks in western literature, see the following: Kamil Aydin, Images of Turkey in Western Literature.Huntingdon, UK:The Eothen Press, 1999. Jale Parla, The Eastern Question and the Fortunes of the Turkish Myth in England and France, Unpub. Diss. Massachusetts: Harvard University, 1978. Berna Moran, A Bibliography of English Publications About the Turks from the 15th Century to the 18th Century. Istanbul: Istanbul Univ. Press, 1964. |
