Description
Book SynopsisIstanbul 1940 and Global Modernity: The World According to Auerbach, Tanpinar, and Edib engages Erich Auerbach's Istanbul career and his pioneering works of comparative literature in a new light. It interprets Auerbach's works against the background of his Turkish colleagues' analogous works that, like Auerbach's masterpieces, were drafted at Istanbul University in the 1940s. Unlike Auerbach's writings, which center around Western literary cultures and Christianity, these Turkish writings trace non-Western, largely Islamicate cultural histories. The critic, novelist, and poet Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar (19011962) and his illustrious senior, the Muslim feminist, humanist, and novelist Halide Edib (18841964) focused on Middle Eastern and South Asian cultural trajectories. In addition to offering groundbreaking insights into their respective cultural legacies, Auerbach, Tanpinar, and Edib elaborated extensively on the intercrossing that is their meeting place, the chiasmic space of modern liter
Trade ReviewIn this book, which combines well-known figures such as Erich Auerbach and Orhan Pamuk with lesser known ones such as Halide Edib and Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, E. Khayyat takes us into the literary world of Istanbul, which gave rise to a new understanding of world literature. This is a book only Khayyat could have written. -- Martin Puchner, Harvard University
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Comparativism, Analogy, and World Literature Part One: How to Turn Turk Introduction Chapter One: Auerbach’s Orients Chapter Two: The Modern Malaise and the Figure Conclusion Part Two: The Boat Introduction Chapter Three: Islamicate Pasts Chapter Four: European Turkey and Literary Modernity Conclusion Part Three: A Wandering Jewess Introduction Chapter Five: Edib’s Spirit Chapter Six: Turkey, India and the World Conclusion Afterword: The Newcomer Bibliography About the Author
