Description:

Event co-sponsored by Keyman Modern Turkish Studies, The Buffett Institute for Global Studies and The Program in Comparative Literary Studies

Title: "Where have all the grown-ups gone?: The emergence of children in the new Turkish novel"

Speaker: Meltem Gürle, Boğaziçi University, Assistant Professor in the School of Foreign Languages

Description:
The Turkish novel is marked by a return to themes of childhood and adolescence in the last decade. Even if the characters are not young enough to be listed under this category, they display qualities of youth, inexperience or immaturity. These new novels emerge as “disfigured” versions of the classical Bildungsroman, in which the characters are stuck in an eternal childhood as they fail to take the journey into the world. They all seem to be dreading experience (Erfahrung) probably because the journey (Fahrt) involves too much danger (Gefahr). This paper will look into the reasons of this fairly recent development and possibly also engage in a discussion of the problem of the "puer aeternus" (eternal childhood) observed in the characters of the new Turkish novel.

Bio:
With advanced degrees in both philosophy and literature, Meltem Gürle is an assistant professor at Boğaziçi University, in the School of Foreign Languages. She is a comparatist whose focus is on the genre of the “world text” and on non-western modernisms. Her research areas also include nineteenth century German philosophy, theories of the novel, and the work of James Joyce.
Meltem Gürle has also been writing a literary column for the Turkish daily BirGün since 2009.

Lunch Served