Zeynep Harputlu | King's College London (original) (raw)

Papers by Zeynep Harputlu

The increasing numbers of urban poor and the unprecedented growth of Victorian London significant... more The increasing numbers of urban poor and the unprecedented growth of Victorian London significantly altered the ways in which social and moral differentiations came to be written into the structure of the city in the late nineteenth century. In George Gissing and Arthur Morrison’s city, this paper argues, the ‘otherness’ and ‘isolation’ of the poor were explicitly identified and narrated through mapping poverty with a naturalistic representation of smaller spatial units within the borders of impoverished districts. Considering Charles Booth’s distinctive analysis of London as a physical structure in Labour and Life of the People (18891903), this article provides a comparative approach to the representation of urban poverty and slums in Gissing’s The Nether World (1889) and Morrison’s A Child of the Jago (1896) with an emphasis on physical boundaries, spatial segregation and naturalism. In these works, the outcast poor dwell in strongly classified spaces because of their difference; ...

The relations between literature and mapping have long been an area of interest among researchers... more The relations between literature and mapping have long been an area of interest among researchers in social sciences and humanities. From the mid-twentieth century, in particular, technological advancements in cartography and the emergence of humanistic geography have transformed literary mapping into an enthralling interdisciplinary field: Literary Geography. In this line, this study aims to provide a critical overview of the role and increasing significance of maps and mapping in literary criticism through a humanistic perspective. The study places a special emphasis on humanistic geography and argues that, along with the notable developments in cartography, humans' experience of space and place, as well as their distinctive navigation and cognitive skills, have contributed considerably to the development of literary geography and cognitive mapping which provide new perspectives on understanding the various ways authors, readers and critics experience, view or represent spatiality in literature and literary studies. In this respect, the article outlines a theoretical and historical approach to the growing interdisciplinary research carried out on spatiality, mapping and literature since the 1960s and presents notable examples regarding the use of maps and mapping in imaginative narratives and critical works. Furthermore, the present work contends that the progress of literary cartography and cognitive mapping in the digital era provides new opportunities for digital humanities by generating spatial/visual representations of complicated human senses, feelings and moods associated with particular real/imaginary spaces, places or landscapes used in narratives.

This study seeks to examine (mis) representations of otherness in British detective fiction and f... more This study seeks to examine (mis) representations of otherness in British detective fiction and focuses on the travelling gypsies as the criminal other in "The Case of the Missing Hand", a story published in 1895 in Chronicles of Martin Hewitt by Arthur Morrison. In line with its objectives, the study firstly introduces characteristics of Victorian detective fiction and then provides a literary analysis of the crime story with a presumed murder victim, an exoticized crime setting, the detective figure and a foreign gypsy as the criminal other. In the article, it is argued that Morrison's short story is a reflection of the strong stereotyping of the gypsies in Victorian society and depicts misrepresentation of the figure of the outsider gypsy as the criminal/villain in British community for endangering their sense of security and safety in the period. The use of primaeval superstitions as a motive for committing a crime further demonstrates estrangement of the gypsy community by distancing them both culturally and temporally through implications of primitiveness and savageness.

Studies in Turkish Language and Literature -Cultural Readings, 2020

This study aims at using literary mapping as a part of the interpretation of literary texts rathe... more This study aims at using literary mapping as a part of the interpretation of literary texts rather than using it as a metaphor. Spatial and temporal structures of a plot and the internal logic of narrative highlight interrelations between time and place in literary works since both history and geography shape the narrative structure of the novel. Mai ve Siyah (1896-97; “The Blue and the Black”) raises major questions about the relations of time, space and (Imperial) power, and how they influence literary forms and styles. Mapping Istanbul in the novel allows a deeper comprehension of the condition of art and literature, the press, and the publication culture in the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth century. The depiction of Babıâli Street reveals its major position as the cultural centre for the press, publishing and literary circles in the capital. The novel also portrays the physical and intellectual environment of Tepebaşı and Beyoğlu districts and highlights the Western culture of Istanbul. The timeline of the plot denies linearity and it is dynamic with a retrospective narrative. Mapping representational (and non-represented) spaces in the novel further help us get a better grip on the wider implications of the commodification of art and literature on the period.

Complutense Journal of English, 2019

This article examines the ways in which the Victorian body and identity were being transformed in... more This article examines the ways in which the Victorian body and identity were being transformed in the mid-nineteenth century and identifies three distinctive ways the biological and normative boundaries of the body were violated as represented in Dickens's fiction: the grotesque body, the vulnerable body and the dead body. In this sense, Dickens's "Bleak House" (1851-53) and "Our Mutual Friend" (1864-65) present creative and challenging literary responses to the Victorian body abjected through deprivation, physical vulnerability and death. In the novels, the grotesque body challenges the abject via a tragicomic and hybrid representation of the body and of character. Regarding the vulnerable body, the study elaborates on a body "out-of-control", threatening the boundaries between the object and the subject, inside and outside, by holding a liminal state through ill-health, excessive labour, starvation and physical degradation. Finally, it is argued that there was an intimate and abject relationship between the living and the dead bodies in the capital, beside prevalent infant deaths, high mortality rates, diseased bodies and overflowing graveyards in the city.

The Gissing Journal, 2019

This study focuses on George Gissing's representations of life, death, and meaning in his corresp... more This study focuses on George Gissing's representations of life, death, and meaning in his correspondence and selected literary works, "The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft" in particular, and argues that although he had a sceptical approach to the meaning and purpose of life, his intellectual idealism, interest in art, and sympathy for the sufferings of mankind made his life more tolerable and meaningful. In Gissing's life and literary works, it is possible to observe a gradually transforming understanding of the will-to-live, death, and meaning. In his early socialist and slum novels such as "The Unclassed" and "Demos", Gissing expresses a stronger will-to-live and idealism in drawing attention to the miseries and struggles of the lower classes. Yet, he later finds out that they share fundamentally different objectives and understandings of life. Towards the end of his life, his pessimism seems to have given way to wisdom and disinterest regarding everyday life and troubles. In Gissing's novels, death is not something to be feared since it means an ultimate release from worldly sufferings and the miseries of existence. Instead, it is endowed with positive connotations rather than being depicted as a fatal end for his fictional characters. For the analysis, the article utilises Schopenhauer's "will-to-live" theory, Freud's "death drive" theory, and key philosophical readings on the meaning of life, death, and mortality.

This paper examines the impact of the Victorian railways on railwaymen in relation to labour and ... more This paper examines the impact of the Victorian railways on railwaymen in relation to labour and social economy, the industrialisation of travel, and urban modernity in three short stories: "The Engine-driver" by Andrew Halliday, "The Engineer" by Amelia Edwards and "The Travelling Post-office" by Hesba Stretton in Mugby Junction, edited by Charles Dickens in 1866. Regarding the history of the railway, emphasis has shifted from the cultural and social aspects to psychological interpretations of the influences of science and technology on individuals. These stories provide an insight as to how the machine ensemble played a critical role in altering railway workers' physical, emotional and psychological states, and transformed them into haunted "modern" subjects. The representations of mystery, death, crimes and spectral images in these stories not only address deep anxieties and a changing mode of life, but also acknowledge the reader about how the Victorians reacted to the rapid expansion of the railway network within and beyond the British Isles.

The Nordic Journal of English Studies, 2019

Gissing's "New Grub Street" (1891) and Hamsun's "Sult" (1890) depict distinctive voices of outcas... more Gissing's "New Grub Street" (1891) and Hamsun's "Sult" (1890) depict distinctive voices of outcast young artists suffering from urban poverty, displacement and isolation, and reveal a deeper insight into wider questions on urban modernity, passive resistance and a fragmented identity. The plots and semi-autobiographical accounts of these texts locate them specifically in late-nineteenth century Kristiania (Oslo) and London by focusing on changing standards of literary culture in the 1880s and 1890s. Hamsun's emphasis on the subjective individual and Gissing's emphasis on representing realist social groupings offer us complementary accounts of the experience of rootlessness, the self-division of outcast emigrant writers and the difficulty of survival by sticking to their own terms in creating and presenting their works of art in the capital. A comparative reading of these texts helps us to see not only their city-specific contexts, but also a transnational understanding of the commercialisation of art and the passive resistance of the artists that spanned the national borders of England and Norway. These urban novels, I suggest, perform a critical resistance to the assimilating forces of late-nineteenth-century modernity and changing economic conditions with the aim of preserving artistic integrity and freedom.

This study examines the transforming notions of home, belonging and exile in 'For Love Alone' by ... more This study examines the transforming notions of home, belonging and exile in 'For Love Alone' by Christina Stead and suggests that the heroine Teresa represents a modern exile who searches for love, knowledge and freedom in the imperial context of the early twentieth century. Teresa's experiences are both shaped and constrained by her family relations, gender, colonial and imperial status, and her cultural and geographical bonds with Great Britain. Her voyage from Sydney to London, in this sense, symbolises a continuous struggle against all kinds of social, cultural and historical pressures at the intersection of modernity and imperialism in the 1920s and 1930s. Teresa, as an Australian white woman, cannot develop a sense of belonging by oscillating between exploited and colonial lands. In time, she gets rid of her ties to objects, people and places, and for her the real home becomes a world of love, knowledge and independence.

Crossroads: A Journal of English Studies, 2018

This study aims to discuss the complicated nature of literary biography by focusing on the intert... more This study aims to discuss the complicated nature of literary biography by focusing on the intertextual relations and anxiety of influence among biographers of a single subject. Taking Samuel Johnson’s life and outlook on literary biography as a starting point, the article examines two influential works that are separated by a significant amount of time, "Life of Johnson" (1791) by James Boswell and "Dr Johnson and Mr Savage" (1993, 2005) by Richard Holmes, suggesting that in both there is a strong sense of rivalry with their subject and an anxiety about the influence of their predecessors. Both authors exhibit love for or interest in their subject while they strive for superiority in literary biography with their distinctive narrative technique and commentaries on Johnson’s character and life. In this study, I utilise Harold Bloom’s theory of influence in an attempt to show how anxiety and rivalry function as part of a crea- tive process and driving force that leads to original contributions to the field.

The Victorian, 2018

This article probes the extent to which social-class stratification, moral thresholds and liminal... more This article probes the extent to which social-class stratification, moral thresholds and liminal spaces and bodies played a role in the survival of the East End in the late-nineteenth century. Arthur Morrison's fiction, in this sense, builds awareness of neglect and degeneration, and highlights the need for renewal and restoration in the East End. Morrison's style is distinctive for telling the story of East Enders from an insider's point of view and translating the " stranger's literature " into a more intimate and personal experience. Undertaking the city as a unified yet heterogeneous fabric, this study suggests that slums and ruinous spaces were a part of a greater whole and their potential for liminality was essential to the existence of the East End. The paper takes a thematic approach to the representation of the East End and focuses on ruins, holes, analogies of animals, indefinable objects and grotesque bodies in A Child of the Jago (1896)-with a greater focus-, Tales of Mean Streets (1894) and The Hole in the Wall (1903). In A Child of the Jago, the Jago is not only a place to dwell in but it also nourishes and hides criminals within its ruins and holes. It is an urban ruin that aggravates the efforts of the middle classes trying to reconstruct an ordered and transparent space. The deviation and grotesqueness of the Jago help maintain its existence and survival disregarding the social codes and practices of the other classes.

In Victorian London it was practically impossible to avoid filth since it contaminated everything... more In Victorian London it was practically impossible to avoid filth since it contaminated everything it touched by transgressing bodily and spatial boundaries, leaving social classes vulnerable to its degrading effects. The Victorians' faith in progress and civilisation, and a healthy nation was distorted by the revolting presence of dirt generating ambiguity between the body and space, purity and defilement, and the poor and the rich. Yet, how exactly did filth transgress the boundaries of the body, social classes and spatial units? Did purification, as well as filth, generate an anxiety among the working class and the poor? How did filth and purity affect the representation of the urban poor and their problems in literature? The purpose of this study is to explore the transgressive nature of filth and its seemingly discrepant influences among the lower classes in late-Victorian London. By elaborating on these questions and discussing senses of place, dirt and cleanliness in spatially segregated slums in Arthur Morrison's "A Child of the Jago" (1896) and George Gissing's "A Nether World" (1889), this paper argues that there existed a relative understanding of filth and purity as well as a transforming sense of smell among the lower and middle classes. In these major slum-novels, slums are characterised by their foul odours, darkness, violence and criminality; yet the poor and the working classes are re-humanised with an ambivalent approach to social stratification and environmental factors. This approach reveals an increasing anxiety against cleanliness and hygiene, and a need for preservation of social and moral values among the urban poor, in response to the lowering tolerance of middle classes against foul odours, dirt and moral degradation from the mid-to late Victorian era.

University of Bucharest Review, 2016

The increasing numbers of urban poor and the unprecedented growth of Victorian London significant... more The increasing numbers of urban poor and the unprecedented growth of Victorian London significantly altered the ways in which social and moral differentiations came to be written into the structure of the city in the late nineteenth century. In George Gissing and Arthur Morrison's city, this paper argues, the 'otherness' and 'isolation' of the poor were explicitly identified and narrated through mapping poverty with a naturalistic representation of smaller spatial units within the borders of impoverished districts. Considering Charles Booth's distinctive analysis of London as a physical structure in Labour and Life of the People (1889-1903), this article provides a comparative approach to the representation of urban poverty and slums in Gissing's The Nether World (1889) and Morrison's A Child of the Jago (1896) with an emphasis on physical boundaries, spatial segregation and naturalism. In these works, the outcast poor dwell in strongly classified spaces because of their difference; they are considered deviant and a threat to the structure of power in the metropolis, where an increasing consciousness of boundaries and of spatial order exists. Gissing's city is generally described as dull and monotonous, while Morrison's streets are full of grotesque and lively characters corrupted by socioeconomic conditions and trapped in East London.

This paper seeks to understand the relationship between ruins, memory and identity in Victorian L... more This paper seeks to understand the relationship between ruins, memory and identity in Victorian London, and to explore ideas about the presence of classical and urban ruins that altered the way the Victorians experienced space and time in the mid-nineteenth century. The ruins were not only fragments from the past but also a fundamental part of the Victorians' identities, and they played a significant role in shaping the narratives of mid-Victorian fiction. Dickens' novels offered a wide range of literal and metaphorical representations of memory, ruined sites and selves linked with material ruins and the process of ruination in the metropolis and in Europe. In "Little Dorrit" (1855-57), for instance, the memory of the Marshalsea Prison haunts the narrative of the novel both in England and on the Continent. The image of the prison is a part of Dickens's childhood-self and he reconstructs this space by looking back to some thirty years earlier with a delicate storyline of 'a fragile' child. In "Dombey and Son" (1846-48), Dombey's house as a symbolic ruin is a key to the discovery and exploration of the lost bond among family members through the sense of place and memory. In the two novels, memories and personal failures are compellingly described in line with deserted and/or collapsed houses used both as material and symbolic ruins to describe the vanishing hopes of the characters and their final failures. The city of progress and reconstruction in the nineteenth century, London included seemingly contradictory spaces such as ruinous slums, graveyards, and deserted houses. Charles Dickens extensively used these ruinous spaces in his narratives of the city and urban poor. His novels offered a wide range of literal and metaphorical representations of memory, estrangement and ruined sites and selves. Whilst Dickens sought consolation by sublimating classical ruins far from the gloomy and despaired vision of London, his narratives of the city life demonstrated how " ruins transgress[ed] and subvert[ed] the everyday encounter " of the Victorians with space and place (Trigg, 2009, p. xxv). Ruins symbolised the Victorians' difficulty of detachment with a dominant past and the establishment of clear boundaries between the modern and the conventional. The ruins in the city also " threatened constantly to obstruct the project of improvement " and signalled " the image of the ruin of the future " (Nead,

The stories of Charles Dickens and Herman Melville, "The Signal-Man" (1866) and "Bartleby" (1853)... more The stories of Charles Dickens and Herman Melville, "The Signal-Man" (1866) and "Bartleby" (1853) respectively, have received much critical attention more than one century to date. The settings and themes of the two stories suggest that they share a common understanding of mid-nineteenth century Britain and America in terms of urban alienation, industrialised landscape, and the division of labour. In this study, I argue that spectrality has been used as a narrative strategy to describe the experience of abjection, a psychoanalytical theory developed by Julia Kristeva in "Powers of Horror" (1982), which refers to human reactions (such as horror or exclusion) to a breakdown of distinction between self and other or subject and object. Kristeva asserts that when an adult confronts the abject, s/he simultaneously identifies it and feels a sense of helplessness. Thus, an abject turns into a threat against the self and " it must be radically excluded from the place of the living subject, propelled away from the body and deposited on the other side of an imaginary border" (Creed, 1993, p. 65). Once the subject is driven into the world of the abject and imaginary borders are disintegrated, fear and horror become unavoidable. The occupations and eccentric characterizations of the signalman and Bartleby signify this fragile border between their selves and experiences of abjection through spectrality.

This article aims to discuss gendered parameters of national identity and collective memory in co... more This article aims to discuss gendered parameters of national identity and collective memory in contemporary South Asian women's writing. Tahmima Anam's A Golden Age (2007) and Roma Tearne's Bone China (2010), in this context, represent the positive transformation of women's roles in the public and private spheres, as well as the understanding of femininity and masculinity in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh during the independence war. In the reproduction of national identity, there is an emphasis on the significance of privatised domestic space, women's involvement in the national struggle, and a feminised collective memory in historically male-constructed nations. In A Golden Age, despite her traditional gender roles and controversial national identity, Rehana becomes a defender of Bangladesh due to her altering political views, while her daughter, Maya, symbolises the progressive role of a new generation of women in the movement. In Bone China, besides civil war and resistance, immigration enforces a loss of collective identity, whilst women's domestic and public lives are subject to profound change. The two novels promise hope for the transformation of women's roles and status, and emphasise the significance of women's narratives and collective memory in the preservation of national identity.

Books by Zeynep Harputlu

Peter Lang Publishing, 2020

Has censorship always been a threat to authorship and artistic production? How did the mass marke... more Has censorship always been a threat to authorship and artistic production? How did the mass market, the reading public, political or economic concerns influence authors’ creativity and literary production in the late nineteenth century? Was self-censorship an individual choice based on voluntary action or fear in the period? How and to what extent did censorship have an impact on the content, form and structure of the novel genre? This book addresses these pivotal questions and examines the transforming notion of authorship, literary production and censorship with a particular focus on England, Norway and the Ottoman Empire. In the novel genre, George Gissing’s "New Grub Street" (1891), Knut Hamsun’s "Sult" ("Hunger"; 1890) and Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil’s "Mai ve Siyah" ("The Blue and the Black"; 1898) portray the changing conditions of art and the artist and draws attention to the pressing need for artistic autonomy, self-expression and creativity in the period.

Studies in Turkish Language and Literature -Cultural Readings, 2020

Complutense Journal of English, 2019

The Gissing Journal, 2019

The Nordic Journal of English Studies, 2019

Crossroads: A Journal of English Studies, 2018

The Victorian, 2018

University of Bucharest Review, 2016

The increasing numbers of urban poor and the unprecedented growth of Victorian London significant... more The increasing numbers of urban poor and the unprecedented growth of Victorian London significantly altered the ways in which social and moral differentiations came to be written into the structure of the city in the late nineteenth century. In George Gissing and Arthur Morrison's city, this paper argues, the 'otherness' and 'isolation' of the poor were explicitly identified and narrated through mapping poverty with a naturalistic representation of smaller spatial units within the borders of impoverished districts. Considering Charles Booth's distinctive analysis of London as a physical structure in Labour and Life of the People (1889-1903), this article provides a comparative approach to the representation of urban poverty and slums in Gissing's The Nether World (1889) and Morrison's A Child of the Jago (1896) with an emphasis on physical boundaries, spatial segregation and naturalism. In these works, the outcast poor dwell in strongly classified spaces because of their difference; they are considered deviant and a threat to the structure of power in the metropolis, where an increasing consciousness of boundaries and of spatial order exists. Gissing's city is generally described as dull and monotonous, while Morrison's streets are full of grotesque and lively characters corrupted by socioeconomic conditions and trapped in East London.

Peter Lang Publishing, 2020