Nationalist transformation of the historical novel :|Namık Kemal’s Cezmi as an example of rewriting

Abstract

One of the government's primary goals in the republican era is to create a new Turkish nation/identity with a common language, culture and historical unity. The reflection of this goal in literature is to try to establish a national literary canon. With the Alphabet Revolution in 1928, the connection with the Ottoman-Islamic past was severed, and many pre-republican texts were left on the dusty shelves of history for a long time. The most remarkable texts from Ottoman literature included in the new canon are the early novels. Because although these works are the founding elements of modern Turkish literature, there are discursive/ideological differences between the empire in which they were written and the republican period in which they were republished. This situation brings to mind whether any interventions were made while bringing the texts to the canon. In this context, the focus of this thesis is Namık Kemal's historical novel Cezmi, which he introduced to the reader in 1880. Despite the author's reputation in the republican period and the popularity of his works, Cezmi was first translated into Turkish by Fazıl Yenisey in 1963. Moreover, when the text is examined, it is observed that many functional details in the original narrative, essentially historical, religious and cultural expressions, have been adapted to the nationalist understanding of the republic, and the novel has been rewritten with various additions, deletions and changes. This thesis aims to read the rewriting of Cezmi as a nationalist practice with a comparative analysis and reveal that Yenisey makes the text a tool to glorify the Turkish national identity.