Ottoman women writers have always been a part of Ottoman intellectual history. Even though they have always been categorized specifically based on their gender as “women” in major literary histories from the 15th to 20th centuries, women writers only started to embrace this gender appropriation in the 19th century. Before that, women writers did not seem to be interested in highlighting their gender. What happened in the 19th century to embolden women’s gender consciousness? Did this only happen to women? If we are talking about an overall gender consciousness in the Ottoman intellectual world, is it possible to read this development in the light of Foucault’s ideas of historicizing sexuality? The best cases for investigating the idea of Ottoman authorship and its relation to gender in the 19th century are the writings of Ahmet Mithat (1844-1912) and Fatma Aliye (1862-1936). Mithat’s biographical narrative of the first woman novelist, Fatma Aliye, Fatma Aliye Hanım yahud Bir Muharrire-i Osmaniye'nin Neşeti [Fatma Aliye: An Ottoman Woman Writer is Born] registers a male intellectual’s perspective on the emergence of a woman writer. In comparison to Mithat’s work, Fatma Aliye’s Nisvan-ı Islam [Women in Islam] is a woman’s reflection on gender roles in an Islamic state. Interestingly, Fatma Aliye writes her opinion about the issue through a dialog with an unknown French woman. This paper through a comparative analysis of these works, not only contextualizes the emergence of the Ottoman woman writer in the 19th century, but also traces its links to the classical period.

Muhayyelat (1796, Imaginary Lives) written by Giritli Aziz Efendi (1749-1798), consisted of three phantasms in which mystical experiences, realistic descriptions of Istanbul and supernatural affairs amalgamated each other.The collection was not only a rewriting of the stories in One Thousand and One Nights, The Thousand and One Days, Latifi's Ibretnuma, El-Ferec bad'eş-Şidde but also a model text for modern Ottoman stories, novels and dramas. During the emergence of modern Ottoman literature (after 1850s), Muhayyelat was rediscovered by Ottoman readers. It was first published in 1852 and had five editions between 1852 and 1873. Modern Ottoman authors produced some works based on the plot, characters and phantasms in Muhayyelat. Salim's play Sözde Sebat (1870) was an adaptation of "Recep Beşe" story in Muhayyelat. Salim added a melodramatic dimension to a mystico-realistic story. The mystical and traditional imagination of "Recep Beşe" was translated into a melodramatic imagination. The plot and characters were depicted in a psychologized and romanticized manner. In 1877, Ahmet Mithat Efendi wrote a parody of Muhayyelat: Çengi was also a cultural and literary appropriation of Cervantes' Don Quixote. The title of the first chapter was "A Don Quixote in Istanbul". Çengi became an intertextual space produced out of Muhayyelat and Don Quixote. Sözde Sebat and Çengi will be the main examples in my discussion. Focusing on the reception and appropriation of Muhayyelat in the nineteenth century, I aim to understand how modern Ottoman literature grew out of classical Ottoman story and modern European novel. The following will be my research questions: How did modern Ottomans read and rewrite Muhayyelat? How was Muhayyelat's narrative discourse translated into a psychologized and romanticized style? How was mystical content of Muhayyelat appropriated in modern Ottoman texts? What was the function of genre transitions during the cultural translation process of Muhayyelat?

This papers traces the emergence of the modern Ottoman litterateur during the last decade of the nineteenth century through Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil's 1896 novel Mai ve Siyah (Blue and Black), the story of a young poet whose presence in the field of literature was haunted by a dramatic realization of a double-bind that started to affect those who participated in the world of literary publishing: a promise of extraordinary success and fame, paired with the danger of a great failure. Realization and acceptance of this double-bind constituted a definitive turning point in the emergence of the modern author in Ottoman literature, one that impacted Halit Ziya's late-imperial and early-republican successors. With the increased presence of the publishing house as a venue for the publication of literary texts, an unprecedented realm of possibilities for individual style and artistic self-expression became conceivable, particularly since the figure of the sultan had lost a considerable part of his power as the patron of arts and receiver of poetic praise. This enabled authors to re-conceptualize the working principles of Ottoman Turkish literature in accordance with their current aesthetic sensibilities and the demands of a new body of readership, a product of standardized education policies. The newly emerged freedom had, however, a flip side: Without a hierarchical structure centered around a powerful figure, inter-authorial competition for recognition, prestige and monetary gain became more fierce, bringing along a higher potential for frequent personal attacks and ridicule while, on the other hand, the promise of social mobility through individual hard-work and persistence often paled in the face of financial incapacitation of publishing houses, requiring authors to resort to family funds, or in its absence, to write texts that would sell more but that remained outside the realm of their literary tastes. Mai ve Siyah, as the first wide-reaching fictional account of the modern literary field of Istanbul, is the story of this co-existence of promises and dangers, one that unsurprisingly struck a chord among the fellow authors following its publication.

The novel, as a genre, was a 19th century phenomenon for the Ottoman Empire. Different millets in the Empire discovered and imported it as a brand new medium to understand, interpret, and describe their modernizing societies and the transformation they involved. Istanbul was the most important hub in the development of novel writing and not only the first Turkish novel, but also first Armenian, Greek, and Bulgarian ones have been written in Istanbul. Armenian literature had an interesting and special position in this fascinating literary atmosphere of the city and Istanbul continued to be the main center of modern Armenian literature until the collapse of the Empire. Interestingly, since its very beginning, Armenian novels had been produced in two languages: Armenian and Turkish. In 1851, Vartan Pasha published The Story of Agapi, the first novel in Turkish but in Armenian alphabet; in the same year, Hovhannes Hisarian wrote Khosrov and Makruhi in Armenian. After this date, as a popular genre, the novel flourished, the number of production dramatically increased until 1915. In the last quarter of the period, Zabel Yessayan took the scene as one of the first Armenian woman fiction writers. In this paper first, I aim to understand the main dynamics that informed the Ottoman Armenian novel writing in Istanbul since the very beginning and attempt to contextualize its birth taking into account the discussions went along with it. Second, I will focus on Zabel Yessayan’s works and try to discuss how her fiction changed and challenged the general dynamics of Ottoman Armenian novel.