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On the borders of modernity: west and east in Turkish prose from the Tanzimat period until the Blue Anatolia movement.
Kučera, Petr ; Malečková, Jitka (advisor) ; Šedinová, Jiřina (referee) ; Celnarová, Xénia (referee)
This dissertation examines the construction of images of "West" and "East" in modern Turkish fiction from its beginnings in the 1870s to the end of the "Kemalist prose" in the 1950s. It shows how the process of Westernization of Turkish society is reflected in literature, how the alteristic discourse about "us" and "the Others", East and West, is developed in literary texts and what impact it has on the shaping of modern Turkish identity. Part I focuses on the period of the "literary Tanzimat" (1870s - 1890s) and analyzes the perception of West and East in the novels of Namk Kemal, Şemsettin Sami, Mizanc Murat, Samipaşazade Sezai, Nabizade Nazm, Beşir Fuad, Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem and Ahmet Midhat. Special attention is given to Ahmet Midhat who had been studying and comparing both civilizations all his life. In this part, we also attempt to reevaluate some of the prevalent views of the Ottoman cultural transformation in the 19th century. We argue that this transformation was not based on the duality and collision of Western and Ottoman-Islamic ideas, institutions, lifestyles or practices (alafranga vs. alaturka), but that it gave birth to a uniquely Ottoman modernity, coming to life on the borders of both epistemological and semiotical systems and embracing positively the "hybrid" character of Ottoman...
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