A Review on the Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu Ankara Novel by the Unity of Time and Space

The novel of Yakup Kadri, one of the most prominent authors of Turkish novel, is evaluated as a literary work that reflects social and cultural evolutions. The novel which is published in 1934 by the author is composed by three chapters. In the first chapter the national combat period, in the second chapter first years of republic and in the last chapter, the first twenty years after the declaration of the republic are mentioned. In this novel the evolution of capital Ankara is told with the social and cultural differences. On the other side, the change of the people who lived in Ankara, is told in the novel. By this aspect the novel of Yakup Kadri attracts attention by the quality of reflecting the political and cultural ambiance of late history. Another important aspect of the novel is the effective use of the time and space. In this regard, the novel presents a structure that is suitable for examining the novel by the Mikhail Bakhtins literary method. Mikhail Bahtin’s chronotope term that is derived from Relativity Theory, is based on the unity of time and space. In case Yakup Kadri’s novel is examined with the approach which is defined by Bakhtin, it can be seen that the unity of time and space is in an attractive level. Thus the novel that is subject of the change of space by the three different time crosscut, emphasize the alteration effect of the time on the space. With the changes in the space, the time become visible in the narration and evaluates the world of sense in the text. By this way, the time’s changing function of the space and human behaviors explain the social history in the novel.

Keywords

Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, Ankara, Mikhail Bakhtin, Chronotope