The emergence and the end of an endemic genre in Turkish literature: the case of the village novel in a comparative context

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780429279270-32

The emergence of the Turkish novel is a popular subject field among literary critics in Turkey, and there is a prolific and ongoing discussion on the ontological and epistemological nature of the birth of the first novels. Berna Moran, one of the prominent critics of the Turkish novel, also uses a similar method and tries to frame the village novels with five basic content characteristics. “Pastoral novels,” on the other hand, are directly related to the concept of the “pastoral,” which has a much broader historical background and a very strict definition. The purpose of these texts is to symbolically describe, interpret, or discuss certain religious, moral, and philosophical teachings or knowledge. The “rural/rustic novel” appears, however, to most approximate the vague definition that comes to mind when the village novel is mentioned. The most distinctive feature shared by these two terms, which can be used interchangeably, is that the expression “rural/rustic” is sometimes also used for town-sized settlements.