Önyargılı Batılı Perspektifinden bir Doğu Şehri: Paul Bowles'in Gözünden İstanbul

Elif GÜVENDİ YALÇIN-
2020 Turkish Studies - Language and Literature  
This article explores the short travel text written by American writer Paul Bowles about Istanbul in his book Their Heads are Green and their Hands are Blue (1957) under the essay titled "A Man Must Not be very Moslem" (1953). This paper seeks to explore American author Paul Bowles' travel text about Istanbul in 1953. All travel writing has a two-way aspect. It first provides a report on the wider world, while also providing information about an alien person or a place. However, it also reveals
more » ... in some way the traveller's values, concerns and assumptions. It also gives away something about the culture in which the author originated and / or the culture for which his text is intended. Accordingly, to begin with, travel literature in general and limitations of the genre is explained briefly. Thereafter, the concepts of orientalism and the effects of orientalist stereotypes are discussed. In the scope of Orientalism Edward Said argues that Asia, Turks and Islam have been stereotyped by the West. The orientalist generalization of the Turkish image has led to the alienation and exclusion of the Turks, East and Islam. For this purpose, many Europeans and Westerners alike have been comparing Hellenic cultural accumulation which is the constituent of European identity with the Islamic cultural background of the Turks. In the light of this information, Paul Bowles comes to Istanbul with the orientalist bigotry. In search of an exotic city, Bowles could not find what he is looking for in Istanbul. Instead, he is disappointed when he has noticed the half-east and half-west side of Istanbul because he regards the westernization of nations as a threat to their cultural past, although he is influenced from an orientalist point of view. Structured Abstract: In the most general sense, traveling is making a journey or, in other words, making a movement in space. A journey can be large, such as traveling to other parts of the continent, or it can be modest and small, like traveling to your home country or region. The result is the negotiation between self and other caused by movement in space. Travel writing is also the recording or the by-product of this encounter. The definition of the term travel writing is a very vague and broad. Some critics who propose that travel writing is travel literature accept travel writing as a broader term and incorporate all forms of travel products into travel literature. On the other hand, Paul Fussel adopts the narrower definition of travel writing, and Fussell considers traveling to be the name of this literary genre. According to Fussel, just as tourism is not travel, the guidebook is not a travel book. For Fussel, the desired travel book is classified as travel literature in many books and is visually and formally similar to novels.
doi:10.47845/turkishstudies.45964 fatcat:bvw3njmsyvfelm2k3ipyjyuipe