M.A. Theses

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A mimetic and narratological reading of postmodern fiction
(Thesis (M.A.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2007., 2007.) Halaçoğlu, Halil İbrahim.; Öğüt Yazıcıoğlu, Özlem.
This thesis analyzes three postmodern pieces: “Scarlatti Tilt”, a short story by Richard Brautigan, The Body Artist, a novel by Don DeLillo, and Adaptation, a film by Spike Jonze, with an aim to prove that the structure of all three, though highly fragmented and complex, as well as the seemingly absent unified meaning eventually lead to a closure. A reinterpretation of mimetic theory and narratology is necessary to demonstrate how postmodern texts lend themselves to more meaningful interpretations. This thesis explores several mimetic approaches including ancient and contemporary ones to display that even postmodern texts are still referential in the sense that they reflect the perception of the postmodern era which itself is fragmented. Narratology analyzes texts in the light of sequentiality to attribute a narrative value to them; however, after reinterpreting the point of view, exposition and the communication model of narrative, which involves the participation of the implied author, the dramatized narrator, the model reader and the authorial reader, one can see that narrative quality does not necessitate a sequential order. Combining the reinterpreted narratological approaches mentioned above with the idea that mimesis continues to exist in postmodern fiction, this study claims that the fragmentation and emptiness in texts can reveal unified plots. The two-sentence-long short story “Scarlatti Tilt” narrates a murder which the text does not explicitly portray; the fragmented novel The Body Artist is the narration of a woman’s story by herself in the aftermath her husband’s death, and the film Adaptation displays that postmodern fiction may have to cooperate with conventional story telling, thereby being mimetic and narrative.
A study of Astrophel and Stella
(1958.) Tamer, Ülkü, 1937-
A threshold to an object oriented ontology :|metacognitive mystery tale as a hermeneutic pandemonium
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2022., 2022.) Doğalı, Canberk.; Gumpert, Matthew.
This thesis reads three novels of the genre called "metacognitive mystery tale". These novels are The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, Mulligan Stew by Gilbert Sorrentino, and The Serialist by David Gordon. This thesis aims to explore the hermeneutics of the genre and offer its distinguishing generic features through this investigation. It discusses the politics and ideology implied by the hermeneutics of the metacognitive mystery explored, and shows how the genre promotes and represents an emancipatory and anti-totalitarian hermeneutics. The thesis discusses and depicts that a totalitarian hermeneutics characteristic of detective fiction transforms everything into state apparatuses, depicting them as purely instrumental. Detective fiction does so by transforming things into fixed meanings that join each other and constitute and confirm a larger whole. Referring to a larger whole, things become symbols. And in detective fiction, they symbolize omniscience and omnipotence of the authority that translates them into clues -- things that point beyond themselves -- and then seals them together. In contrast, the hermeneutics of metacognitive mystery is liberating in that it frees things from the political and ideological mechanisms, in which detective fiction assumes and renders them to function. The thesis argues that metacognitive mystery achieves such a liberation by portraying things indeterminate. Following the imagery of instrumentality, if things are instruments, according to detective fiction, that join each other and thusly constitute a larger whole, metacognitive mystery sets them out of joint. This thesis investigates the ways in which metacognitive mystery does so. It argues that metacognitive mystery demonstrates that things resist being translated into clues, into sound and fixed meanings. I call the text that represents a lack of identification, an inability to define things, a hermeneutic pandemonium. And the thesis discusses that metacognitive mystery portrays a hermeneutic pandemonium. The liberation of things in metacognitive mystery parallels how the school of philosophy Object Oriented Ontology (OOO) democratizes them. Therefore, the thesis argues that the hermeneutic pandemonium is a threshold to OOO; and displays how the novels this thesis reads represent such a threshold.
A Tourist's guide to the authority of presentation in travel narratives: classifying the other, aesthetizing the self
(Thesis (M.A.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2007., 2007.) Göze, Gülfer.; Fortuny, Kim.
This thesis is an endeavor to bring a new perspective to travel literature through a twofold classification of the narratives. The proposed classification differentiates two types of travel narratives according to the degree of the encounter that their writer goes through during the journey and/or the writing period. In this respect, it is an attempt to manifest how the first group of narratives, namely the public ones, are tainted by historical discourses, social prejudices and cultural myths, while the second group focuses more on the personal experiences of the writers and their aesthetical outlook on the visited place. The personal travel narrative is something more than a travel account; it is a search for the self, a search for one’s self in the foreign, in the other. This nuance between the public and personal narratives is the inspiration for and the essence of this thesis. However, before clarifying this distinction, a chapter on the history of travel literature along with a subsequent one on public narratives will serve as a background for the discussion on personal accounts. Within this framework, a variety of works by Henry James, Aldous Huxley, Lawrence Durrell, and Salman Rushdie will be used as primary sources, and the discussion will be bolstered by the theories of Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Edward Said, and Homi Bhabha.
A voice for Eurydice: approaching the Orpheus myth from a feminist perpective
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2010., 2010.) Yalınateş Bilgen, Hande.; Baş, Işıl.
This study argues that the Orpheus myth is originally a transition between goddess cultures and patriarchal religions by revealing the in betweenness of the myth and to what purpose it serves through the works of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book X, Fable I-II; Book XI, Fable I) (8 AD), Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes” (Neue Gedichte) (1904), Kathy Acker’s play Eurydice in the Underworld (1997) and Sarah Ruhl’s play Eurydice (2003) which all use the Orpheus myth as their basis. This thesis also attempts to scrutinize the dual nature of the myth between Apollo-representing patriarchy and Dionysus-bearing characteristics of matrilineality. In this respect, this study extensively borrows from feminist theories of matrilineality which, it is assumed, respect the female and the concepts related to her yet do not degrade the male and the notions associated with him.
An ecopoetic inquiry into Emily Dickinson's dwelling earthward
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2019., 2019.) Artukarslan, Ayşe Beyza.; Görey, Özlem.
This thesis re-introduces Emily Dickinson as a nature poet and furthermore, an ecopoet through the examination of selected poems with an emphasis on the unique features applied by the poet from breaking down grammar rules to upsetting the conventional rhythmic ordinance of verse. The importance of Dickinson’s peculiar composition is underlined after the philosophical discussion of animal from antiquity to present day, from an ontological outcast to an ethical object and finally to an autonomous subject. Introduction of ecology to literature and in particular to poetry is analysed through ecocriticism. With a specific emphasis on the current environmental crisis and animal liberation movements, this thesis re-reads Dickinson’s poetry with the help of animal studies and ecopetic disciplinary approaches. By presenting Emily Dickinson’s dwelling earthward as an exemplary one and perhaps as a way of salvation of human and non human relations, the ultimate aim is to show the possibility to enhance the perception of nature in the eyes of human animal by carrying it from the circumference to the centre of attention.
At SwimTwo-Birds & If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler: a study of metafiction theory, intertextuality and authorship
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2011., 2011.) Çapkın, Nazım.; Öğüt Yazıcıoğlu, Özlem.
This M.A. thesis problematizes extant approaches in contemporary theories of metafiction to recent ‘metafictional’ works, Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler and Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-two-birds, by studying them in their intertextual relation to their literary antecedents. Central to this study is the reevaluation of the various definitions of the concept of intertextuality in the metafiction theories, which are overly formalistic. By exploring intertextuality in literary history, this study argues that its contemporary use does not constitute a radical break with former literary practices, as put forth by the theories. The aim of this thesis is to show that the common treatment of metafiction as a manifestation of postmodernism in literature stems from the imposition on the term metafiction of a single, coherent meaning which overlooks its historical complexity. Study of Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler and Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-two-birds problematizes such indispensible notions of metafiction as self-reflexivity and selfcriticism through rethinking the relationship between metafiction, intertextuality and parody.
Bernard Shaw's relations with woman in general and Ellen Tery
(Thesis - Robert College, 1953., 1953.) Çavdar, Tuncay.
Between stories and stage: narrative presence in Samuel Beckett‘s dramatic art
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2011., 2011.) Öztürk, Dilek.; Tekinay, Aslı.
This study intends to analyze drama and narrative on Samuel Beckett‘s stage within the context of storytelling. Narrative theory is taken as a departure point here, for Beckett‘s drama with its actor-narrators, never-ending stories and idiosyncratic performances lends itself easily to storytelling. While storytelling as a familiar motif in Beckettian fiction has been widely discussed by many scholars, Beckett‘s drama within the context of narrative theory has not received much critical attention. This study tries to show how the two fields, narrative and drama meet at converging paths as one gets to explore narrative presence on Beckett‘s stage. Various stories on Beckett‘s stage, which are open-ended, self reflexive and fragmented, reshape our notion of "drama" and "narrative." As soon as one steps into Beckettland permeated by idiosyncratic narrations and performances, the line between narration and performance gets blurred. "Narrative" becomes "drama,"narrating" takes the place of "acting;" every single word, sound and silence on the stage forms the dramatic atmosphere of the play. At that moment, any particular talk, be it significant or insignificant, between the characters, comes to be perceived as the real dramatic action of the play.
Breaking the closure through language: the representation of oppression and resistance in Margaret Atwood's the Handmaid's Tale and Ursula K. Le Guin's the telling
(Thesis (M.A.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2007., 2007.) Kayışcı, Burcu.; Gülçur, A. Lamia.
This study aims to demonstrate how oppression and resistance are represented on the plane of language in the two examples of critical dystopias. The works that are chosen for detailed analysis are The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin. The study begins with a short survey of the most significant literary utopias and dystopias while simultaneously presenting the definitions and explaining the differences. In this respect, the transformation of the utopian and the dystopian genre through time is also delineated with the help of the comments of various utopian and dystopian critics. Then, the two novels are analyzed to illustrate the qualities that render them the examples of critical dystopias. The discourse of the hegemonic order is juxtaposed with the stories of the main characters which they tell in order to resist the closure of the regime. In the course of the analysis, Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the “authoritative word” and Julia Kristeva’s “poetic logic” are employed to support the ideas presented. The manipulation of history and memory as well as the possibilities that the novels provide in terms of active political resistance is also included in accordance with the concerns of the critical dystopias.
Capacities and ill health :|Deleuzian ethics in the Flame Alphabet and Sıcak Kafa
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2020., 2020.) Şen, Merve.; Öğüt Yazıcıoğlu, Özlem.
This thesis explores the possibilities that Deleuzian ethics offers—the investment in the body's capacities to enter affective and transformative relations, thus lead a response(able) life—as they become manifest in two contemporary novels revolving around language-related diseases: Ben Marcus' The Flame Alphabet (2012) and Afşin Kum's Sıcak Kafa (2016). In The Flame Alphabet, children's speech becomes poisonous for their parents, which causes pain and deformation in their bodies, whereas in Sıcak Kafa a memetic language disease—abuklama—causes people to talk in grammatically correct but semantically nonsensical ways. The diseases disrupt the flow of normalcy in life, thus revealing the suppressive power mechanisms in society, and transform not only the interrelations between the bodies, but also familial, social, and economic relations. In both novels, the employment of a subversive language as a disease signals an ongoing state of becoming, and opens unforeseen paths into diverse and mutually transformative relations to the world, and as such emerges as an enterprise of health. Both novels foreground language exchanges, and experiment with an alternative use of language beyond conventional forms of communication and mere representation. The disease provides a perspective on the sickness caused by the oppressive power regimes in society. These novels pave a fertile ground to discuss ethics, as they refuse the normative conceptions of health imposed on people and propose an understanding of health associated with the body’s capacity to act and affect as well as to respond and be affected.
Charlotte Bronte and Srpuhi Dussap: weaver mothers and palimpsest as grammer of female narration and plot
(Thesis (M.A.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2007., 2007.) Aktokmakyan, Maral.; Ceylan, Deniz.; Antikacıoğlu, Sosi.
The use of double-talk becomes the female discourse in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Srpuhi Dussap’s Mayda. This method as female literary strategy, also termed the style of palimpsest, gives the woman writer the opportunity to tell/ write whatever she likes, thinks and believes and at the same time avoid male criticism and reduction. As nineteenth century writers, both Brontë and Dussap constructed their novels in styles which seem to comply with conventional plots, themes and literary rules. The striking characteristic of both novels is the subversion of the apparent obedience they advocate through similar plots and thematic alternatives they offer. Only in this way is woman’s self-fulfilment achieved and she is promoted as a subject as opposed to her imprisonment in the role of the object. This study aims to discuss the reasons for their application of the palimpsest and the way they are applied in Jane Eyre and Mayda.
Courtly love :|Boccaccio and Chaucer
(Thesis (B.S.)- Robert College, 1966., 1966.) Alissandratos, Alexandra.
“Descending into us from we know not whence”: Marilynne Robinson and the Emersonian tradition
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2015., 2015.) Kotan, İpek.; Fortuny, Kim.
This thesis argues that contemporary American writer Marilynne Robinson’s fiction is informed by the Emersonian tradition, and accordingly seeks to trace and establish this influence in her three novels, Housekeeping, Gilead and Home. Placing Emerson in his American Transcendentalist context, it is argued that even though he perceived and presented his thought as independent from and uninfluenced by his intellectual predecessors, it was nevertheless very much informed by them. Robinson, by means of fictionalization, explores the origins and implications of this disjunction in her novels. The thesis traces this process within the context of American Transcendentalism.
Evidence of growth :|a study of the poetry of Theodore Roethke
(1966.) Gardner, Jacquelyn.; Roethke, Theodore, 1908-1963.
Haunted :|tracing the figure of the ghost in drama
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2019., 2019.) Kılınç, Burcu.; Tekinay, Aslı.
In the long interval between the beginnings of the drama and the contemporary stage, the ghost, with its fundamental liminality, remains one of the most ubiquitous and relevant supernatural figures that appear on theatrical space. As a quintessential figure of ‘return’, the ghost, within the plays it appears in, acts as a valid instrument to bring back to surface the unresolved tensions resulting from major social shifts or national cataclysms in order to acknowledge the existence of these tensions and perhaps, even resolve them. The present study explores the manifestations of the ghost on the theatrical stage of three distinct periods, Ancient Greek, Elizabethan/Jacobean England, and Contemporary (post-1960s) American. In the analysis of the selected plays, the figure of the ghost and its function is examined in relation to notions of justice, memory, legacy and identity. The aim of this comparative study is to trace the continuations and the alterations with respect to the conception and the function of the ghost through this historical trajectory, as the figure continues to probe and bring to surface unresolved tensions.
Historiographic metafiction in postcolonial literature: Foe, Wide Sargasso Sea and Midnight's Children
(Thesis (M.A.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2007., 2007.) Turan, Ayşegül.; Ceylan, Deniz.
This M.A. thesis aims to scrutinize the use of historiographic metafiction in postcolonial literature. The imaginative (re)construction of the past provides the opportunity to tell alternate stories/histories which place the oppressed and the colonized in the center rather than the margin. The examination of the primary sources, Foe by John Maxwell Coetzee, Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys and Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, raises the possibility of a “new voice” which will enable the oppressed/the colonized to represent himself and establish his authority. The issue of representation and the struggle over the narrative voice(s) form the focal points for the examination of texts. Through these media, the answers for the questions “who represents whom?”, “who can represent whom?” and “is it really possible to create a ‘new voice’?” are searched.
HIV/AIDS in American theatre :|queerness, spatio-temporalities, and emancipation
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2020., 2020.) Duman, Çağdaş Özerk.; Fişek, Emine.
This thesis examines American HIV/AIDS theater in the context of time and space. Drawing mainly from queer approaches to time and space, it explores the plays of Paula Vogel’s The Baltimore Waltz (1990), Cheryl L. West’s Before It Hits Home (1990), and Harry Kondoleon’s Zero Positive (1989), respectively. This study, first and foremost, aims to discover overlooked queer politics and spatio-temporal potentialities embedded in these plays. Torsten Graff suggests that queer theory, especially textually, neglects drama. It would not be wrong to say that, apart from some canonized plays, the potentials of HIV/AIDS theater have been overlooked by queer criticism. For that reason, this study aims to awaken these ostensibly dormant queer potentialities as well as to enhance their (re)visitability. Also catalyzed by Erving Goffman’s influential study on “Stigma,” and offering a concept of the “spatio-temporal stigma,” this study shows how this normative duress exacerbates the extant stigma on queer and black PLHIV. Ultimately, it also argues that theatre intervenes such oppressions, providing a liberating alternative spatio-temporality, and thus, heralding a resistant transformation.
How the world changes dystopias :|an ecocritical study of evolving climate fiction novels
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2022., 2022.) Erer, Eda Begüm.; Öğüt Yazıcıoğlu, Özlem.
There is a deep lack of attention to the discussions of climate change, both in general and in literature. The scientific data suggests that we are at a point of no return when with global warming and we will face great climate disasters in the near future. The Drowned World(1962) written by J. G. Ballard and New York 2140 (2017) written by Kim Stanley Robinson, as novels depicting similar drowned futures, use future narratives to criticize current Anthropocentric stances on climate change, and portray dystopic futures as warnings for the present reader. Reading the novels’ fluid connection to time and place through the lens of science fiction as a genre that blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction, this work seeks to trace the entanglements future climate narratives offer as alternatives to current dynamics of capitalism and ecological disaster. Both novels use the motif of the water as an actor that freely flows between boundaries and the different scales of time and disaster depictions show the ineffectiveness of Cartesian binaries against a fast changing climate. Science fiction elements blur the well-established time and space constraints of the Western narrative while questioning the human time and place on Earth. The use of posthuman ecocritical theories offer an alternative to present dichotomies between nature and culture. Science fiction works help to shape different ideologies that do not alienate the human from the the nature, which in turn may help the longevity and quality of human life on the planet.
Humanist humanism: Aziz Nesin’s Yaşar Ne Yaşar Ne Yaşamaz and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2015., 2015.) Griffin, Hardy Micajah.; Gumpert, Matthew.
This project begins by demonstrating how Aziz Nesin and Kurt Vonnegut’s novels are part of a trajectory of humanist works challenging institutionalized bodies of hegemonic discourse. The challenge taken up in writing such works is how to respond without adopting an equally dogmatic stance in response. Vonnegut and Nesin simultaneously absent themselves in the world and exist in and through the work, dissipating in the face of the institutions of hegemony. This existence in the work carries with it a great and exigent failure, for while nothing remains for the dogma to act on, this absence in the world and presence in the work leads to an imbalance between the sacrifice made and the results. These two writers respond to the rise of this challenge and the ensuing failure with their own particular brand of humor—one which is a weapon of critique, a call to arms, an admission of failure, and a transcendent laughter all in one.

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