A comparative study of discontent with modernity and modernization in the novels of A. L. Huxley and A. H. Tanpınar

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Tezin Türü: Doktora

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Eğitim Fakültesi, Yabancı Diller Eğitimi Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2014

Öğrenci: HİLAL KAYA

Danışman: ELİF ÖZTABAK AVCI

Özet:

The aim of this dissertation is to explore Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s philosophical and fictional engagement with Aldous Leonard Huxley in relation to the issues of modernity and modernization. Being attentive to the cultural specificities informing the work of each writer, this project has set out to find to what extent Tanpınar adopts, revises and/or contests Huxley’s attitude towards modernity and modernization in his novels. This dissertation argues that Huxley and Tanpınar make a criticism of the understanding of the modern which is based on the liberal narrative of modernity by writing satirical novels of ideas. Some theoretical concepts developed later by the Frankfurt School thinkers like Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse will be used as a theoretical framework to explore better Huxley’s problematization of modernity. The ideas of Henri Bergson, Walter Benjamin, Sufism and Multiple Modernities will also be used as a theoretical framework to discuss Tanpınar’s approach to modernity. This study aims to contribute not only to the scholarship on Tanpınar’s fiction but also to the critical studies on Huxley, whose works of fiction have rarely been examined from an international perspective. With this end in view A. L. Huxley’s Point Counter Point (1928) and Brave New World (1932) and A. H. Tanpınar’s A Mind at Peace (1949) and The Time Regulation Institute (1961) will be studied in a comparative manner.