2 results
Search Results
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
Article SPACES AND PLACES OF MODERNITY AND THE MODERN ARTIST IN OĞUZ ATAY’S “RAILROAD STORYTELLERS - A DREAM”(Konstantin Preslavsky University of Shumen, 2024) Aksoy,N.B.This paper examines Atay’s “Railroad Storytellers - A Dream” in terms of Atay’s modernist experimentation in his depiction of space and spatiality, emphasising his contribution to Turkish literature as a pioneer modernist author. Oğuz Atay’s distinctive and innovative style, which forms his affinities with the early Western modernists such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, establishes his significant place as a pioneer modernist author in Turkish literature in the 1970s. The concept of ‘house/ home’ by Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space (1957, 2014) is instrumental for me as it pertains to the predicament of three storytellers as artists in the nameless and remote railroad station. The narrator of the story and his fellow storytellers gradually sink into disconnection, confusion, misery and poverty in an environment that represents the cold and unwelcoming face of technological modernisation symbolised by the space of the train station. The narrator’s quest for finding a ‘home’ to connect him to his readers and where he could exist as an artist comes to life in his attempt to write a letter to his readers, telling them he is still ‘here’ and asking them where they are. No matter how blighted that effort is since the narrator has no address to send the letters to, the endings for Atay’s story imply a need for connection with his readers expressed in the impossible meeting of the ‘here’ with the ‘where’ in spite or because of the estrangement and alienation of the artist/author in the modern world. Hence, the possibility of space as a ‘home’ for the author/narrator dwindles in the not forthcoming answer to the letter that will never reach its destination. Copyright © 2024 N. Berrin Aksoy.Article Gendered Space in Alexander Mccall Smith’s the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency(Ovidius University, 2021) Aksoy,N.B.Classic detective fiction provides an ideal space where issues of gender identities can be investigated along with the changing modes of crime fiction. Previously, in detective or crime fiction, women were displayed as victims or villains attached with social and cultural stereotypes. However, beginning in the 80s and 90s female characters started to be represented as detectives and investigators, which allowed space to the renegotiating of women’s place in social and gender norms. Against this background, Alexander McCall Smith comes to the fore as a unique author who has managed to create the Mma Ramontswe character, owner of Ladies’ No. 1 Detective Agency in an African setting, mainly Botswana, the country where he lived as a child and as a youth. Mma Ramotswe is an unconventional detective conducting her amateur profession in a space predominantly inhabited by herself and a fellow assistant lady detective. The novels evolving around No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency in serial form develop in two tracks. Firstly, the office of the agency is essentially a space for lady detectives which provides a metaphorical opportunity to explore gender roles in the less known country of Botswana, a former British colony, within the frame of postcolonial issues that are dealt with extreme subtlety by the author. Secondly, the outer space, which is Africa, where the stories occur is a geographical space recreated by a Scottish, white, medical law professor who never refrains from displaying his partiality towards Africa. Hence, the outer space becomes subject to a representation by the interpretation of a male author belonging to the colonial culture. Consequently, my presentation will focus on the discussion of metaphorical representation of gendered space in the detective fiction of Alexander McCall Smith and the social, cultural and postcolonial aspects of the representation of Africa being the outer space of these novels. © 2021 Ovidius University. All rights reserved.
