Turkish Society in the Early Novels of Reshat Nuri Güntekin

Abstract

ln the present paper the novels The Mysterious Hand, The Stamp and The Wren by Reshat Nuri Güntekin are analyzed from the aspect of social problems.

The novels of R. N. Güntekin appeared at the time of affirmation of the Turkish national literature, after a brief, but a stormy period of Pan-Islamic and Pan-Turkish tendencies. As an observer of the situation in education, life in the village, and the life of the common an in the city, he was very realistic, but his writing lacks warm, lyric tone. The ability for the subtle psychological study of man is a special characteristic of his. All these characteristics make Giintekin a typical representative of that ·period of Turkish literature.

He has been translated into many European languages. Fehim Spaho had been translating his works relatively early, so the Yugoslav readers have known him for over fifty years. R. N. Güntekin achieved great success with his novel, especially among the large numbers of people that were not used to reading books, and he achieved that by making a love story the basis of each of his novels. Thus, it happened that in some of his novels and short stories he 1played to the taste of a vast number of his readers, who became, however, his faithful followers in his more mature works in a later period.

His literary technique places Reshat Nuri along with the most outstanding writers of the national literature, such as Jakup Kadri Karaosmanoglu and Halide Edip Adivar, and his special merit lies in the fact that he was one of the first Turkish writers to choose the picturesque small towns of Anatolia for the location of his novels, in which he knew how to observe customs and people with an extraordinary talent. The Turkish literature until his time, described mostly the life of the high circles of Istanbul.

The present paper emphasizes the outstanding merit of Reshat Nuri for bravely shedding the light on the poor conditions in Turkish education and the position of women in the Turkish society.