Reading Tezer Özlü’s Çocukluğun Soğuk Geceleri and Yaşamın Ucuna Yolculuk novels as self narrated female bildungsroman

Abstract

Tezer Özlü is an effective figure in Turkish literature who writes short stories, novels, a scenario and makes translations between 1970-1980. Özlü’s literary works are constructed by some basic themes such as inner world of the individual, identity crisis, social-political-historical-ideological pressure and survival efforts of a woman under these circumstances. In this thesis, I show how author’s Çocukluğun Soğuk Geceleri and Yaşamın Ucuna Yolculuk novels can be read as female bildungsroman which narrated by a first person narrator by the help of the theoric readings and giving examples from novels. In the first novel the story of the self narrator ends on thirty years age and in the second novel same story are brought fourty years age. In this way, the whole story ends with an individual growth.