Embedded narratives and the chronotope concept in Ahmet Metin ve Şirzat

Abstract

Ahmet Mithat Efendi (1844-1912) one year after he published his travel narrative in 1889, Avrupa’da Bir Cavelan (2015), he began serializing Ahmet Metin ve Şirzat (2015) in 1891. Avrupa’da Bir Cevelan, the work of Ahmet Mithat's first encounter with Europe, is a narrative in which the author has made it clear that Ottoman Empire is far behind the West. The reflection of the occidental discourse caused by this situation is seen in Ahmet Metin ve Şirzat. The discourse of both technical and moral superiority of the East is narrated to the reader through an advanced narrative technique. Therefore, this thesis aims to show how, when Ahmet Mithat had to accept the superiority of the West, he benefited from complex and advanced novel techniques in a compensatory manner. To understand this, first, the skeleton of discourse supported by embedded narratives will be revealed. In doing so, the terminology of Manfred Jahn (2012) will be used. Then, it will be explained how this skeleton shapes in flesh and discourse becomes concrete and representable on the basis of Bakhtin's (1981) chronotope (time-space) concept. In this way, it will be claimed that the occidental attitude, which does not receive enough attention, is an important field of ideological struggle and that Ahmet Mithat put forward a serious fight through narrative techniques in this novel.