East West Mimesis Auerbach in Turkey [Hardcover]

East West Mimesisfollows the plight of German-Jewish humanists who escaped Nazi persecution by seeking exile in a Muslim-dominated society. Kader Konuk asks why philologists like Erich Auerbach found humanism at home in Istanbul at the very moment it was banished from Europe. She challenges the notion of exile as synonymous with intellectual isolation and shows the reciprocal effects of German ?migr?s on Turkey's humanist reform movement. By making literary critical concepts productive for our understanding of Turkish cultural history, the book provides a new approach to the study of East-West relations.

Central to the book is Erich Auerbach'sMimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, written in Istanbul after he fled Germany in 1936. Konuk draws on some of Auerbach's key conceptsfiguraas a way of conceptualizing history andmimesisas a means of representing realityto show how Istanbul shapedMimesisand to understand Turkey's humanist reform movement as a type of cultural mimesis.

East-West Mimesisfollows the plight of German-Jewish humanists who escaped Nazi persecution by seeking exile in a Muslim-dominated society. Konuk's groundbreaking study significantly enhances our understanding of the shared intellectual, literary, and political history that links twentieth-century Turkey to major developments in Europe. Her work poses a significant challenge to persistent beliefs about the 'backwardness' and 'Orientalness' of modern Turkey, revealing that Turkey has never been properly understood in the context of the Orientalism debate. Through an edifying dual perspective on text and location, Kader Konuk'sEast West Mimesis: Auerbach in Turkeytells a fascinating story about the development of modern Turkey just as much as it does about Auerbach's classic work. Immensely readable and engaging, her book is distinguished by extensive archival research into a pivotal phase of modern Turkish cull#+