“Move Forward and Ascend!” : Temporality and the Politics of Form in Turkish Modernist Literature

Abstract

abstract: This article situates Turkish literary modernism within larger discussions on the role of literature within the Turkish state’s modernization program following the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923. The article explores how early twentieth-century government directives regarding the teleology of modernity in Turkey have created tension between characteristics central to modernism’s definition. Reckoning with the ways in which the modernist novel has been constructed as other to Turkish literature by scholars and by authors reveals the ways in which state-sponsored conceptions of Turkish modernity underpin the definitional practices surrounding literary modernism in Turkey and in doing so impact field-level discussions of how and where modernism exists.