This article was automatically translated from the original Turkish version.
Berna Moran’s three-volume work titled A Critical Look at the Turkish Novel is regarded as a reference source in Turkish literature within the field of literary criticism. In this work, Moran examines Turkish novels from the Tanzimat period to the present day across three books, evaluating literary works both structurally and thematically.
Berna Moran - A Critical Look at the Turkish Novel 1 (İletişim Publications)
Berna Moran’s work A Critical Look at the Turkish Novel 1 was published in 1983. The book examines a total of 8 author authors and their works, ranging from Ahmet Mithat Efendi to Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar. In addition to these authors and their novels, Berna Moran also published several of her own articles in A Critical Look at the Turkish Novel 1 on topics such as “The Turkish Novel and the Problem of Westernization” such as novel.
The authors and chapter titles covered in the book are as follows:
“The Turkish Novel and the Problem of Westernization”, “Folk Tales, Hasan Mellahs and Our Earliest Novels”, “Felâtun Lord and Rakı Efendi”, “An Ambitious Novel: Müşahedat”, “Car Sevdası”, “Love-ı Memnu”, “Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar’s ‘Yüksek Philosophy’”, “Şıpsevdi”, “Sinekli Grocery store”, “Kiralık Residence”, “Ideology and Nature in Yaban”, “Ideological Dimensions in Peyami Safa’s Novels”, “Matmazel Noraliya’s Chair”, “Alafranga Züppeden Alafranga Haine”, “A Novel of Unease: Peace”, “The Institute for Adjusting Clocks”.
In the preface to the work, the author stated the following about her study:
“This book is not a history of the novel but rather a critical perspective on our novel from Ahmet Mithat to Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar. While evaluating the authors I examined, I sought to determine how they contributed to the Turkish novel, what techniques they developed, and how successfully they employed the novel form in their approaches to the common and West-East problematic. For this reason, I chose to focus intensively on one or two major works by each author rather than provide broad overviews. As a result, a necessity arose to make a selection among our novelists. Therefore, I included only eight novelists in this volume. This does not mean that there are no other novelists worthy of mention outside my selections. For instance, one might argue that Mithat Cemal Kuntay and Reşat Nuri Güntekin should also have been included, but from the standpoint of my own purpose, the authors I chose seemed sufficient to me.”【1】
The authors and chapter titles covered in the book are as follows:
“The Purpose and Structure of the 12 March Novel”, “Şafak”, “A Wedding Night”, “12 September and the Innovative Novel”, “The Adventure of the Fantastic in Turkish Literature”, “Ten Years Later: A Reassessment of Dear Arsız Death On top of”, “Superstructure as Black Book”, “A Murder Novel and Postmodern Detective Fiction”, “Bilge Karasu’s Guide”.
[1]
Berna Moran, *A Critical Look at Turkish Literature 1* (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2001), 7.【1】
A Critical Look at the Turkish Novel 2
Berna Moran’s work A Critical Look at the Turkish Novel 2 was published in 1990. In this volume, 15 work authors from Sabahattin Ali to Yusuf Atılgan are examined, covering the period between 1950 and 1975 in Turkish novel writing.
The book also addresses the defining characteristics of the Turkish novel during the 1950–1975 period, the social, political and literary conditions that led to the emergence of the Anatolia novel, and themes such as the rural-urban conflict and class struggle.
The authors and chapter titles covered in the book are as follows:
“Kuyucaklı Yusuf as Noble Savage”, “Rural-Urban Conflict on Fertile Lands”, “Eskici and His Sons”, “The Structure of İnce Memed and Bandit Stories”, “The Dağın Öte Yüzü Trilogy”, “Myth of Degeneration in Yaşar Kemal”, “Kemal Tahir’s Concept of the Novel”, “Wolf Kanunu’s Detective Plot and the Culprit”, “State Main’s Conventions”, “Sexual Violence and Class Struggle in Tırpan”, “A Journey from the Captured to the Uncapturable”, “From Aylak Adam to Anayurt Oteli”, “Conclusion: Characteristics of the Second Period Novel”.
A Critical Look at the Turkish Novel 3
Berna Moran’s work A Critical Look at the Turkish Novel 3 was published in 1994, after the author’s death in 1993, and constitutes her final work.
The book examines the novels of Sevgi Soysal, Justice Ağaoğlu, Latife Tekin, Orhan Pamuk, Pınar Kur, and Bilge Karasu. Both the novels themselves and the novels of the 12 March and 12 September periods are analyzed within the framework of social issues. Additionally, postmodernist tendencies and innovative perspectives emerging after 1980 are examined in relation to the novels.
In the preface to A Critical Look at the Turkish Novel 3, Berna Moran stated the following about her study:
“In this third and final volume, I will first examine the novels written during the 12 March period, and then the innovative (avant-garde) works of the 1980s that formed a distinct current. (...) I can say that the impact of the 12 September coup on our novel was in the opposite direction. Not only in Türkiye but globally, the left’s entrapment in a dead end left our writers with no alternatives in the face of increasingly complex social and economic problems, pushing them away from the realistic methods suitable for addressing these issues. Of course not all, but most of the significant ones. Latife Tekin, Orhan Pamuk, Nazlı Eray, Pınar Kür, and Bilge Karasu are among the first names that come to mind. When examining the fundamental change we have witnessed in Turkish novels after 1980—the abandonment of realism and the emergence of a new narrative form along postmodernist lines—I have drawn examples from the writers I have mentioned. In fact, the flight from realism has become widespread.”
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A Critical Look at the Turkish Novel 1