Microsoft Word 1 Arif thesis cover final doc

CHAPTER 4 – HALIDE EDIP AND YAKUP KADRI 
133 
Deprived of Patriotic Works)
67
is one of many of his concerns about national 
literature. The Nev Yunanîlik literary initiative, badly timed as it was, belongs to this 
period and springs from these concerns. 
Nev Yunanîlik 
Nev-Yunanîlik (Neo-Hellenism) was an initiative undertaken by Yahya Kemal and 
Yakup Kadri just after 1912 to create a new literary movement in Turkey which 
would draw subject matter directly from the main source of Western civilisation, the 
Greek and Latin literatures and thus create a literature based on a collective ancient 
Mediterranean culture. (
Bahr-i Sefid Havza-i Medeniyeti Akdeniz Havzası 
Uygarlığı
). It was thought that by abandoning the Arabo-Persian aspects of the 
Turkish literature (
Asyalılık
) and turning towards the Greek and Latin classics as the 
Europeans had done, the Turks would be able to create a lofty and enduring modern 
literature which would be the equal of the Western European one. Both authors had 
become familiar with Greek and Latin literature through French translations of the 
classics and through the works of French authors. As Yakup Kadri himself related to 
Hasan-Âli Yücel
68
, the impetus came from acquaintance with different ‘Hellenising’ 
French authors of the 19
th
century: he mentions the translations from Greek of 
Leconte de Lisle and the original poems of J.M. de Heredia and Jean Moréas. While 
literary ‘Hellenism’ in France flowed through self consciously distinct literary 
67
I am indebted to Sevengül Sönmez for making available to me the unpublished volume by Mehmet Emin 
Uludağ, 76-84. In this volume, Uludağ makes available, in modern Turkish transcription where applicable, all 
Yakup Kadri’s articles, his short stories excluded.
68
Yücel 262-3 

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