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“Before” Homosexuality in Ottoman Literature
Abstract
Numerous scholarly frameworks have so far taken up issues of gender and sexuality in Ottoman literature. However, there is currently no academic study that brings together texts that tackle non-normative practices of gender and sexuality in early modern Turkish and late-Ottoman literature. This paper gives voice to overlooked epistolary novels, short stories and memoirs produced in Ottoman Turkish that pose criticism toward hegemonic and ideal forms of masculinity and femininity in the wake of Turkey’s transition from empire to republic. Among these overlooked texts are Şahabettin Süleyman’s play Çıkmaz Sokak (Dead-end Street), Mehmet Rauf’s novella Bir Zambak Hikâyesi (A Tale of Lilies), Mehmet Asaf Borsacı’s Kocamın Kocası (My Husband’s Husband), Peyami Safa’s Havva’nın Üvey Kızları (Stepdaughters of Eve) and Osman Cemal Kaygılı’s Bir Hilkat Garibesi (A Freak of Nature). A striking commonality between these texts is that all of them are penned by male writers and they treat lesbianism, or what was called muaşakat-ı nisaniye (woman-to-woman love affair) in Ottoman. The texts in question are important historical documents that help us understand the sexual, religious, and social positioning of women vis-à-vis men in late-Ottoman society in its path to modernization. The erasure of these “odd,” “strange,” “pervert,” “immoral,” or queer texts from the Turkish literary canon is a systematically conducted process to exclude heterodox voices. Therefore, my paper is also a modest attempt to remedy the lack of queer voices in early modern Turkish literature.
Discipline
Literature
Geographic Area
Turkey
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries