Literary Developments in Modern Turkey

Abstract

One has yet to find even a general survey in English of modern Turkish literature, although English scholarship can boast of having produced the best account of the premodern or classical Turkish literature in any language. Unsurpassed for the period it covers, E. J. W. Gibb's six-volume A History of Ottoman Poetry (London, 1900-1909) deals almost exclusively with literature before the nineteenth century and, as the title indicates, only with the poetic form. And in fact, poetry was the genre in which the men of literature expressed the Turkish literary art best until the middle of the nineteenth century. Only then did prose, particnlarly the play, short story, novel, and essay, begin to depose classical poetry. In doing so it revolutionized the language and literary standards, took pre-eminence in artistic expression and social influence, and, eventually, gave rise to an entirely new poetry.