The Emergence and the End of an Endemic Genre in Turkish Literature

Abstract

The emergence of the Turkish novel is a popular subject field among literary critics in Turkey, and there is a prolific and ongoing discussion on the ontological and epistemological nature of the birth of the first novels. 1 Because the foundation of modern Turkish literature is dated to 1850s, it is not wrong to claim—like any other late or less novelized literatures—that the first novels and the first modernization movements of the Ottoman Empire were tightly intertwined. 2 In this regard, Turkish novels and Turkish modernization efforts share a common fate, in terms of their initial concerns and desires. On the other hand, when it comes to subgenres of the Turkish novel, the very same field begins to become barren. Although the first steps of the leftist or socialist realist novel tradition of Turkish literature date back to the early Republican era and has had a large audience since then, the origin, history, and evolution of this subgenre has been rarely studied. 3 Village novels of Turkish literature—as a branch of leftist novels—are in this respect an even more neglected subject. When critics do pay attention to them, it is mostly considered through prejudices and clichés. Therefore, in this chapter, my goal is to point out the main features of Turkish village novels and determine the conditions of their historical appearance, success, and ultimate extinction from the literary scene. To achieve this, I will first describe and fact-check the well-known yet poorly studied characteristics of village novels. Besides defining the position of the village novels, I will reread some of the main arguments of literary critics and assess the validity of their perspectives. Then, through a detour of village novels, I will discuss how the ambiguity of this genre is interpreted in some other literatures and try to compare Turkish village novels with their counterparts. Third, to understand the unique historical background and philosophy of these novels, I will briefly introduce the Village Institutes of the 1940s, how these schools helped (and caused) village notes to come into being, and how these village notes eventually evolved into village novels. Finally, I will interpret the way village novels were received by the leftist writers and the literary community of the period (1950–1980) and the reasons for the different receptions that emerged over time.