Grammatology and Literary Modernity in Turkey

The 1928 Turkish alphabet reform replacing the Perso-Arabic script with the Latin phonetic alphabet is an emblem of Turkish modernization.Grammatology and Literary Modernity in Turkeytraces the history of Turkish alphabet and language reform from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, examining its effects on modern Turkish literature. In readings of the novels, essays, and poetry of Ahmed Midhat, Rec#xC3;#xA2;izade Ekrem, #xC3;#x13;mer Seyfeddin, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, Peyami Safa, and N#xC3;#xA2;zim Hikmet, Nergis Ert#xC3;#xBC;rk argues that modern Turkish literature is profoundly self-conscious of dramatic change in its own historical conditions of possibility. Where literary historiography has sometimes idealized the Turkish language reforms as the culmination of a successful project of Westernizing modernization, Ert#xC3;#xBC;rk suggest a different critical narrative: one of the consolidation of control over communication, forging a unitary nation and language from a pluralistic and multilingual society.

Nergis Ertürk is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Pennsylvania State University.