Titel
Literature and the legacy of Empire: Approaching Turkey’s post-imperial condition through Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar
Autor*in
Abstract
How does literature engage with the legacies of Empire? This article examines how imperial decline and nation building are reflected in textual production after the First World War. With Turkey as a case study, it focuses on the post-imperial narrative as a form of narration dealing with the experience of imperial loss, political contingency and possibilities of national belonging. I argue that Turkey’s post-imperial condition is shaped by coming to terms with the loss of the Ottoman Empire, on the one hand, and a nationalising present embedded in the experience of Western-dominated modernity, on the other. Against this backdrop, I examine essays from the compilations Yaşadığım Gibi (1970, ‘As I lived’) and Beş Şehir (1946, ‘Five Cities’) by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, a key intellectual of the early republican era. The analysis of these post-imperial narratives reveals how Tanpınar tries to root Turkey’s national modernity in selected elements of the imperial past. For Tanpınar, continuity with (Turkified) imperial heritage is a prerequisite for a strong nation-state.
Stichwort
Ottoman empireTurkish literatureAhmet Hamdi Tanpınarearly republican TurkeyOttomanism
Objekt-Typ
Sprache
Englisch [eng]
Persistent identifier
Erschienen in
Titel
Philosophy & Social Criticism
ISSN
0191-4537
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Publication
SAGE Publications
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Zugänglichkeit
Rechte
Rechteangabe
© The Author(s) 2024
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