National Literary Historiography in Turkey: Mehmet Fuat Köprülü and His Legacy (original) (raw)

This chapter investigates the development of national literary historiography within the framework of Ottoman literary modernity, the nation-building process, and its persistence in modern literary studies in Turkey. It explores the emergence of the concept of modern literary history based on the idea of linear time and progress, showing how the modern concept of literary history was imported from Western Europe, indigenized, and transformed into Turkey’s first national literary history by Koprulu. The chapter argues that the nationalization process in Turkish literary historiography occurred gradually through a productive engagement and negotiation with European models and the premodern local biographical collections of poets, or sair(ler) tezkireleri, the dominant form of literary history in the Ottoman Empire. The nineteenth-century encounter between Ottomans and Europeans generated profound social, political, and cultural changes in Ottoman society.