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Theses on the “National Truth”: Border Crossings between History Writing and Historical Fiction in Attilâ İlhan's Gâzi Paşa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2015

Erol Köroğlu
Erol Köroğlu*
Affiliation:
Department of Turkish Language and Literature, Boğaziçi University, İstanbul, Turkey, erolkor@gmail.com
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Abstract

The aim of this essay is to read Attilâ İlhan's novel Gâzi Paşa, a historical novel about the Turkish Independence War, with a focus on the distinction between history writing and historical novel. I begin my analysis of this novel from the narratological perspective developed by Dorrit Cohn, who emphasizes two aspects of this distinction: different reference fields of history and fiction, and fiction's distinctive ability in reaching into the minds of characters. These aspects will help me to unravel the production of meaning in Gâzi Paşa through its ambivalent and intentional border crossings between the two fields. Then, I will explain this intentional textual swing through an analysis of its roman à thèse features, which I ground on Susan Rubin Suleiman's description of the genre. Finally, the essay will discuss Gâzi Paşa's authorial intention that aims at instructing an audience through a narrative of charisma, founded on a specific representation of Mustafa Kemal for the purpose of propagating a black-and-white perception of history and politics.

Keywords

Attilâ İlhanTurkish novelhistorical novelroman à thèseMustafa Kemal
Type
Articles
Information
New Perspectives on Turkey , Volume 36: Special Issue on Literature and the Nation , Spring 2007 , pp. 97 - 123
Copyright
Copyright © New Perspectives on Turkey 2007

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