Two Reluctant Modernists: Huxley and Tanpınar A Comparative Study of Point Counter Point and a Mind at Peace
Journal Title: Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi - Year 2018, Vol 58, Issue 2
Abstract
This study aims to explore to what extent Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar's A Mind at Peace (1949) engages with and/or is in conflict with Aldous Huxley's Point Counter Point (1928) in terms of each writer's discontent with modernity and modernization. It is a comparative study of two novels embedded in different contexts, but having similar concerns. The paper basically argues that the selected novels demonstrate their writers' critical perspectives in the matters of modernity and modernization. An analysis of the formal and thematic similarities and differences between these novels reveals the ways in which these two texts offer a criticism of modernity and modernization. As the study highlights, despite their similar concerns about and criticism of modernity, the novels display significant differences in terms of their disparate formulations of the modern. More specifically, the paper argues that Huxley's Point Counter Point is structured around an understanding of modernity, which equates the modern with the West. Tanpınar's formulation of modernity in A Mind at Peace, however, is quite different from that of Huxley's novel in that Tanpınar's philosophy of the “modern,” which shapes A Mind at Peace, is founded on a vision of modernity that is local and polycentric. As a last note, the study emphasizes that despite the difference between the two novels regarding the conceptualization of the modern, both Huxley's and Tanpınar's discontent with modernity arises from their similar diagnosis of the lack of harmony and completeness in modern life which, for Huxley, corresponds to the Western world and, for Tanpınar, to his country, Turkey.
Authors and Affiliations
Hilal KAYA
Keywords
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- EP ID EP631453
- DOI 10.33171/dtcfjournal.2018.58.2.19
- Views 95
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