Gender Anxieties and the Formation of a Literary Genre
Gender Anxieties and the Formation of a Literary Genre

Summary/Abstract: Having emerged in the late nineteenth century, the novel is a relatively new genre in Turkish literature. However, this belatedly-introduced genre offers rich material to explore patterns of gender identity construction. This paper proposes to discuss the understudied role of gender representations in the formation of the Turkish novelistic canon. My argument is centred around a basic question: Does our understanding of a text change if we focus on the male characters, instead of the heroine, in one of the most widely-analyzed Turkish novels? By examining Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil’s (1866-1945) Aşk-ı Memnu (The Illicit Love, 1900), the founding text of modern Turkish fiction, I address how conceptualizations of masculinity shaped early Turkish novels. I depart from the mainstream view that considers Aşk-ı Memnu a work that primarily relates to the issue of women’s emancipation. This new reading of Aşk-ı Memnu offers an opportunity to revisit the novel’s central status in the Turkish literary canon.

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