Narratives of loss : Mai ve Siyah, Huzur and Tutunamayanlar

Abstract

This thesis draws upon a close-reading of Halid Ziya Usakligil's Mai ve Siyah (Blue and Black, 1897), Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar's Huzur (A Mind at Peace, 1949) and Oğuz Atay's Tutunamayanlar (The Disconnected, 1971) in terms of Georg Lukacs's concept of "romanticism of disillusionment." Considering Ahmet Cemil, Mumtaz and Selim Isik, respective protagonist of each novel, as romantic figures, this study depicts the story of intellectuals who fail to constitute their romantic individuality. It discusses the protagonists' idealized but "impossible" relation with writing in terms of romantic individual's being "doomed to fail." The fact that the works which they could not accomplish are adopted and transformed into novels by Usakligil, Tanpinar and Atay corresponds to the transformation of the failure of the protagonist into the success of the novel.