Modernity, tradition and negotiation in the literary magazine Post Öykü

Abstract

This thesis aims to analyze young Muslim writers' negotiations with older generation Islamist writers and the general literary public around the concepts of modernity, tradition, and postmodernism by examining the first 27 issues of the literary magazine Post Öykü, which has a conservative aspect due to its emphasis on Islam. It aims to understand the younger generation's demands from both the Muslim literary public and the general literary public. The thesis's central claim is that the young writers of the magazine who started writing after 2000 have gone through a transformation in terms of the way they build their Muslim identity. These young writers, who carry their relationship with Islam on a cultural basis, do not use an Islamic language when writing and thinking. However, they embrace Islam as an open identity. As a reflection of this, they demand both to address the Muslim literary public and be accepted by the general literary public. In this direction, they try to create transitional grounds on the institutional border that separates the inside and outside of the Islamic literary space and find a new literary line, connecting with both the Islamic tradition and the broader literature. This thesis attempts to understand what opportunities the young generation finds in fantasy literature, myths, mystical texts, archetypal criticism, and traditionalist mystical school during their search for a new approach.