Microsoft Word 1 Arif thesis cover final doc

CHAPTER 3 – SOME TOPOI IN THE KURTULUŞ EDEBİYATI 
83 
social conditions served as a mere background of the main characters, he was 
characterized in some literary circles, as 
Çalıkuşu Yazarı
(The author of Çalıkuşu)
4
. 
This sneer was aimed at his supposed sentimentality and lack of social grit but 
overlooks the range of his work. In almost all his novels, certainly including 
Çalıkuşu
, he dealt with the theme of love for children, the generation gap and the 
importance of education for the cause of independence. In his mature period, after 
1928, his novels contained social criticism as well. While his forms followed the 
Western tradition, his themes reflect concerns that are exhibited in the novels of the 
Tanzimat period: false Westernisation being the main theme of 
Damga 
(Stamp) is 
borrowed from one event in Ahmet Mithat’s novel 
Hasan Mellah
5
. The setting of 
Çalıkuşu 
itself with the teacher with a Western education confronting Anatolia 
obviously relates to the debate about Westernisation in Turkey.
The innovation of 
Çalıkuşu 
is to set an Istanbul educated person and particularly a 
woman teacher against the background of different settings in Anatolia. Appearing 
towards the end of the Anatolian war in the course of which many Istanbul 
intellectuals had made their way to Anatolia, even though that war does not impinge 
on the plot, the novel had a particular emotional resonance for readers, heightened by 
the fact that the heroine’s flight from Istanbul is itself an escape, in her case from a 
marriage. 
Çalıkuşu
is the story of its heroine, Feride. The choice of name, meaning unique or 
incomparable, is significant because it denotes her character, just as in 
Vurun 
4
Kudret II, 270 
5
Kudret II, 269 

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