Literary neo-Ottomanism : the emergence of a cosmopolitan Turkey in world literature

This dissertation offers a new reading of Modern Turkish literature as drawing on its Ottoman past and participating in a global discourse through an analysis of recent developments in Turkish literature. By developing the phrase “literary neo-Ottomanism” through a set of images that are typical of the Ottomans produced mainly in the nineteenth century and later reworked in contemporary Turkish novels, the dissertation focuses on the refractions of this Ottoman past for two Turkish authors, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar and Orhan Pamuk and explores how they speak to a global readership. A revival of the Ottoman past projects possibilities for a continued Turkish presence in world literature. Each writer has a distinct view of and use for the Ottoman past, and the convergences and divergences reveal much about the implications of modernism. I explore the status of Turkish literature as both a local expression and as a “world” literary tradition, through which Turkish literature seeks a place for itself in world literature while at the same time addressing the local. This exploration takes on both of these projects through a reconsideration of the Ottoman theme. I argue that the Turkish case is exceptional because of the distinct nature of the Ottoman Empire and because its demise was internally engineered.