Logoteunison: Literary Easternization in Orhan Pamuk’s Works

This book explores the enduring European and American interest in literary works portraying Eastern themes and perspectives. It examines how literary Easternization, termed “Logoteunison”, manifests in Western literary works that reflect, embody, or deploy Eastern values or concepts; or else ape, mimic, parody, or pay homage to various Eastern and especially Persian masterpieces. Such repurposing or appropriation is frequently powered by features from the postmodern toolkit: intertextuality, metafiction, fragmentation.

The novelist Orhan Pamuk has been influenced (arguably unwittingly) by literary Easternization. In his Western-style works, Pamuk channels Eastern values, creating texts nevertheless in the Western mold and primarily aimed at Western readers. Pamuk uses Istanbul—the writer’s birthplace, a city between two worlds, a halfway land binding together Asia and Europe—both as a physical setting and to symbolically mediate Eastern and Western worldviews.

This title has a threefold purpose: by establishing a theoretical and contextual background for Eastern masterpieces and forming a distinctive review of Eastern culture as filtered through Pamuk’s works, it suggests a new theory in literary criticism, one which aims to adopt a novel philosophical approach to the study of literary Easternization.

Students of comparative and Turkish literature will find in this volume detailed background information about Turkish, Persian, and Arabic masterpieces, as well as their significant cultural correspondences and affinities, especially regarding their employment of Sufi themes. Any student or scholar interested in the postmodern cross-fertilization of Middle Eastern and Western literature will find this work fascinating and rewarding.

Introduction

Chapter 1 What is Easternization?

Chapter 2 Neo-Weberian Theory of Easternization

Chapter 3 Easternization and Sufism

Chapter 4 Easternization as the Reverse of Orientalism

Chapter 5 Easternization of the Postmodern Age

Chapter 6 East and West in the Age of Easternization

Chapter 7 Easternization is the Other of Itself

Chapter 8 Easternization for Pamuk as a Turk

Chapter 9 Easternization of World Literature

Chapter 10 Intertextuality Represents Literary Easternization

Chapter 11 Classical Eastern Literary Masterpieces Represent Literary Easternization
11.1. Masterpieces of Eastern Romantic Literature
11.2. Didactic and Sufi Thematic Eastern Masterpieces

Chapter 12 Logoteunison: The Social Theory of Easternization Behind Literature

Conclusion

References

Secondary Sources

Index

Saman Hashemipour read English Language and Literature at undergraduate level. He graduated in American Studies and completed his PhD in Comparative Literature. He is a lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature and the Department of American Culture and Literature at Girne American University. Hashemipour has authored several books, including Life into Literature: Orhan Pamuk in His Works (2017) and Iranian-Americans in the Memoirs of Firoozeh Dumas (2017).

Literary Easternization, Orhan Pamuk, Easternization, Logoteunison, Intertextuality