Literature as a mirror of history: A comparative study of the historical fictions of Ahmet Hikmet Müftüogˇlu (1870-1927) and Jūrjī Zaydān (1861-1914)
[Thesis]
Esra Tasdelen
Shissler, A Holly
The University of Chicago
2014
285
Committee members: Bashkin, Orit; Lewis, Franklin
Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-321-43287-9
Ph.D.
Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
The University of Chicago
2014
This dissertation analyzes select fictional works of Ahmet Hikmet Müftüogˇlu (1870-1927) and Jūrjī Zaydān (1861-1914) that were published in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt at the beginning of the twentieth century. Through a comparative analysis, this study shows how the authors popularized the historical novel and short story genres in the Middle East, how they envisaged the nation, viewed the nation's past, and utilized the power of literature as a tool to convey this vision to the readers. After a brief introductory discussion of the rise of the novel genre and the effects of print capitalism in the Middle East, the dissertation focuses on the lives of these intellectuals as products of major developments in the region such as the rise of Turkism in the late Ottoman Empire and the Nahda (The Arab Renaissance) in Egypt and Syria. The close textual analysis of the novels and short stories that follows reveals important connections between intellectual debates prevalent in the Middle East at the beginning of the twentieth century as they relate to the main themes in the novels, such as history, identity, empire, governance, minorities, lineage, ethnicity, race, gender, religion and language.
Middle Eastern literature; Middle Eastern history; Religion; Literary criticism; Vision; Novels; 20th century; Text analysis; Literature
Language, literature and linguistics;Social sciences;Arab literature;Arab nationalism;Turkish literature;Turkish nationalism