Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem as a Theorist and as a novelist: |Talim-i Edebiyat and Araba Sevdası with respect to the oppositions of east- west and romanticism- realism

Abstract

In this study, Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem's two works one of which is a part of and the other fictionalizes the Westernization movement launched in Tanzimat period, are analyzed with respect to the philosophical trends and the social structure of the period and Ekrem's other works. These two works are a book on literary criticism, Talim-i Edebiyat, and a novel, Araba Sevdası. They, being examined first one by one and then together on two different axes, present us a panorama of the period. In this examination Talim-i Edebiyat is read again and again in order to make a new sense out of it, then it is reviewed within the context of literary schools and the westernization project which aims at a synthesis of western and eastern cultures. In the second part Araba Sevdası is studied with a parallel view as a novel with its main character symbolizing pseudo-westernization and which reveals the incommensurability of eastern and western epistemological approaches. In what follows comes the conclusion and here it has been shown that Tanzimat literature which was articulated in Talim-i Edebiyat is criticized in Araba Sevdasl and that the mentality which has been held in the former is rejected in the latter.