Ottoman Culture and the Project of Modernity - by Monica M Ringer & Etienne Charrière (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Central to the nineteenth-century Ottoman Tanzimat reform project, the novel originally developed outside of Ottoman space, yet was adopted as a didactic tool to model and generate new forms of Ottoman citizenship. Essays in this book explore the appropriation of the novel as a literary genre and its deployment in the late Ottoman cultural project of constructing an Ottoman modernity.

Analyzing key texts and authors, from the works of Ahmet Midhat Efendi to Mizanci Murad and Vartan Pasha, among others, the book's chapters explore the novel genre as far more than a case of importation of Western and non-Ottoman cultural productions, but rather as a vehicle for the cultivation of indigenous modern subjectivities.

Review Quotes

'Ottoman Culture and the Project of Modernityis a successfully conceived volume on the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire and its complex modernization efforts, highlighting the significance of local elements in the nineteenth-century transformations, showing that modernity did not always mean "western."'
Emine Evered, Associate Professor, Michigan State University, USA

About the Author

Monica M. Ringer is Professor of History and Asian Languages and Civilisations at Amherst College, USA.

Etienne E. Charriere is Assistant Professor in the Department of Turkish Literature at Bilkent University, Turkey.