Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T12:55:33.153Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Cinema Grande” and the Rhetoric of Illusion in Uyurkulak's Har

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2015

Meltem Gürle
Meltem Gürle*
Affiliation:
School of Foreign Languages, Boğaziçi University, İstanbul, Turkey, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article traces the patterns of irony and the carnivalesque in Murat Uyurkulak's fantastic fiction Har, focusing especially on the depiction of a group of misfits, yamuklar (the crooked), as portrayed in the central chapter, “Cinema Grande.” Arguing that a reconfigured carnival spirit finds its way into Uyurkulak's novel, the article explores from a Bakhtinian perspective the ways in which the author offers a modern version of popular festive elements, especially the jester or the fool who signifies the symbolic destruction of authority and resistance to the mechanisms of power. The employment of the carnivalesque enables the author not only to speak of what is essentially unspeakable, but also to displace the illusion of progress fabricated by authority. This turns out to be possible only through artistic illusion. By focusing on the portrayal of the outcasts in Cinema Grande, this article also draws attention to the different representations of madness in Atay's “disconnected” and Uyurkulak's “crooked.”

Keywords

Uyurkulakillusioncarnivalmadnessmodernism
Type
Articles
Information
New Perspectives on Turkey , Volume 36: Special Issue on Literature and the Nation , Spring 2007 , pp. 125 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © New Perspectives on Turkey 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ahıska, Meltem. “Occidentalism and Registers of Truth: The Politics of Archives in Turkey.” New Perspectives on Turkey, no. 34 (Spring 2006): 9–29.Google Scholar
Ahıska, Meltem. “Occidentalism: The Historical Fantasy of the Modern.” South Atlantic Quarterly 102, no. 2/3 (2003): 351-79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Altunok, Özlem. “Murat Uyurkulak: Etrafınıza Bir Bakın, Sizce de Kıyamet Kopmuyor mu.” Cumhuriyet Dergi, 29 January 2006.Google Scholar
Atay, Oğuz. Günlük, İstanbul: İletişim, 1987.Google Scholar
Atay, Oğuz. Tutunamayanlar. İstanbul: İletişim, 1985.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail M.Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail M.Rabelais and His World. Translated by Iswolsky, Hélène. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Bozdoğan, Sibel, and Reşat, Kasaba, eds. Türkiye'de Modernleşme ve Ulusal Kimlik, İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1998.Google Scholar
Calinescu, Matei. Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Clark, Katerina, and Holquist, Michael. Mikhail Bakhtin. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Difference. Translated by Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Ertuğrul, Suna. “Belated Modernity and Modernity as Belatedness in Tutunamayanlar.” The South Atlantic Quarterly 102, no. 2/3 (2003): 629-45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gürbilek, Nurdan. Yer Değiştiren Gölge, İstanbul: Metis, 2005.Google Scholar
Irzık, Sibel. “Tutunamayanlar'da Çokseslilik ve Sınırları.” Varlık, no. 1057 (1995): 44–47.Google Scholar
Mann, Thomas. “The Infant Prodigy.” In Of Time and Place: Comparative World Literature in Translation, edited by Fox, S. Eugene. Illinois: Scott Foresman and Company, 1976.Google Scholar
Parla, Jale. Don Kişot'tan Bugüne Roman, İstanbul: İletişim, 2003.Google Scholar
Tanpinar, Ahmet Hamdi. The Time Regulation Institute. Translated by Gürol, Ender. Madison: Turko-Tatar Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Türker, Yıldırım. “Tol, roman!” Radikal 2, 3 November 2002.Google Scholar
Uyurkulak, Murat. Har. 2 ed. İstanbul: Metis, 2006.Google Scholar
Uyurkulak, Murat. Tol. İstanbul: Metis, 2002.Google Scholar