مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - Ottoman Perception of Popular Historical Novels in the Republican Era: Deliler Saltanatı (The Lunatic Reign) Example

Abstract :

In Turkish literature, it is recognised that popular novels written in the early Republican period had frequently criticized the old regime, Ottoman Empire, especially its negative aspects, in order to gain more legitimacy to the new regime. Looking into those historical novels enable us to get very interesting knowledge in this aspect. Writers who developed new insights about the old regime within the roman s possibilities and therefore they fictioned their novels in accordance with the contemporary official historical thesis. Iskender Fahrettin Sertelli (1895-1945) who is one of the writers identified with Revolutionary movement of the 1930s had usually written this kind of popular historical novels. The novel of Sertelli named Deliler Saltanatı (The Lunatic Reign), published in 1931 typically exhibits us the Ottoman perception in the contemporary historical novels. There are interesting similarities between the contemporary historical understanding and the author s narrative style for corresponding historical period of the Ottoman Empire along with its figures. In this article, the author’s approach to the Ottoman Empire and the Ottoman identity and the oriented Ottoman perception by the author are been elucidated.