The canonization and popularization of realism in Turkish literary discourse through translation: a conceptual–historical approach

Abstract

This dissertation argues that approaching realism as a concept rather than a literary school or movement yields better results in terms of evaluating its impact on Turkish literature and the shaping of translation activities in the Republican Period. Linking Conceptual History, Polysystem Theory, and Critical Discourse Analysis, this study delves into the transfer of realism, its discursive relations, and its links with the systems with which it was associated, such as literature, both indigenous and translated, and politics. Tracing the journey of realism from the Tanzimat Period to the Republican Period, this study dwells specifically on the discourse seen in Varlık, one of the most important literary journals of the Republican Period, between the years 1933-1946. It demonstrates how, having been re-contextualized with reference to the significant components of the official ideology, a process which begins with its transfer into Turkish literature as a literary school in the Tanzimat Period, realism becomes a bridge concept linking the official ideology to literature and from there, the official ideology to the reading public. It reveals that the process of creating a national literature in the early Republican Period resulted not only in the canonization of realism in fiction but also in the popularization of the same. The latter was achieved by means of the re-contextualization of certain works of Western literature, which are called bestsellers in this study, whereby certain aspects of such works, which agreed with the conceptualization of realism at the time, were purposefully highlighted. It argues that the popularization of realism was both a trigger and a result of the process which turned realism into a pivotal concept in the literary field, furthermore expanding its realm beyond that of a mere literary school, as it had been in the Tanzimat Period.