East West Mimesis

Kader Konuk puts forward a provocative claim: He argues that the modern Turkish identity was not only established by the Kemalist cadres, but that German-Jewish refugees who escaped from Nazi oppression and came to the country, that is, privileged foreigners within the Turkish society, played an important role in the construction of this identity.

At the center of the book is Erich Auerbach, who left Germany in 1936 and became the head of Istanbul University's newly established School of Foreign Languages, and his groundbreaking work Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, which he wrote during this period. Considering the context in which this work was written, Konuk focuses on how Istanbul shaped Auerbach's writing process of Mimesis. It shows that Mimesis stands before us as a work that will help us understand Turkey's humanist reform movement within the framework of a kind of cultural mimesis.

This book, which enables us to understand the cultural history of Turkey by using the concepts of literary criticism efficiently and creatively, also brings a brand new approach to the study of East-West relations.



Number of Pages: 320

Year of Printing: 2013


Language: Turkish
Publisher: Metis Publishing

First Printing Year: 2013

Number of Pages: 320

Language Turkish