The Relationship between historical documents and fiction in Attila İlhan's Aynanın İçindekiler series of novels

Abstract

Literature is considered as a different area from history according to its relation with reality, because history objectively examines the past events through the information obtained. Therefore, according to classical historiography, the historian cannot fill the unknown gaps in the text created by him/her, but literature gives the author the opportunity to fill these gaps as he/she wants when he/she reveals a work that describes a historical period. In this context, there is no such claim of literature when a historical text asserts the truth. Historical novelists can also tell a historical era without having to use historical resources. They can use resources and they can even transform their resources as they want. In this thesis, the effect of the historical documents is examined in Attilâ İlhan’s Aynanın İçindekiler series of novels which was subject to the important events of Turkish political history from 1908 to 1960. The historical documents which are used in this series of novels provides a better understanding of the historical period to the reader, they legitimate the discourse of the characters, they help readers to adopt the theses defended by Attilâ İlhan as a writer. On the other hand, while the historical documents which are used in these novels fulfill the mentioned functions, they ambiguate the boundary between the truth and fiction.