Methodological challenges in Late Ottoman and Turkish literary scholarship: gender, aesthetics, and sociopolitical contexts

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780429279270-16

Ottoman and Turkish literature abound with exciting discoveries. In this chapter, the authors explore the challenges awaiting scholars of Ottoman and Turkish literary studies in the quest to address questions related to gender, intersectionality, and sociopolitical contexts. The difficulties in the field become more pronounced as the authors compare the scholarship in Ottoman and Turkish literature with other (particularly European and American) scholarly canons. For various reasons, but mostly because literary scholarship and literary histories of Ottoman and Turkish literature are limited, particularly in their explorations of gender and intersectionality, the field lacks many sources critical to teaching or understanding different possibilities for canonization and periodization. A few hitherto unexplored questions, for instance, might lead to the discovery of innovative aesthetic movements among women writers and sexual minorities throughout the century.