A THEMATIC APPROACH TO KEMAL TAHİR'S SHORT STORIES

Kemal Tahir is undoubtedly considered as a novelist in our literature. The author, whose part of thinking is predominant, having his specific history and worldview, avoiding the approached by heart and ideological approaches, thinking about the concept of indigenousness, and not refraining from criticizing Turkish intellectuals especially from the point of view of civilization, has tried to deepen this attitude in his thoughts and stories which he propounded on the story. Kemal Tahir published a total of eighty-one (81) short stories in his four short story books, which are Göl İnsanları (1955), Dutlar Yetişmedi (2005), Zehra’nın Defteri (2005), Üstadın Ölümü (2006)  and although he was a name who had thought about the art of short story, in most of the sources referring to him, his thoughts and novelist aspect have been referred to, but his short stories were generally not subject of discussion. Another reason of this is that the last three story books were published thirty years later after his death, and another reason is that the most known and aforesaid story book is composed of long texts. Göl İnsanları (1955) mostly perceived as the texts which is a small novel and it was thought that the author was preparing for novel with this work. In our paper, first of all, we refer to the author's view of the short story, then it is tried to examine the existing main stories in terms of content and to determine the relationship between Kemal Tahir short storytelling and novel writing and also its position in Turkish short storytelling. Kemal Tahir, who has already gained an important place in the history of literature with his stories such as “Arabacı”,“Göl İnsanları” and “Çoban Ali ”, needs to be emphasized more.

Keywords

Short Story, Turkish Short Storytelling, Short Story Poetics, Kemal Tahir.