É. Duclos, Orhan Pamuk and World Literature - Comparative and World Literature

French Literature Reviews - 2026

É. Duclos, Orhan Pamuk and World Literature
Comparative and World Literature

Élise Duclos, Orhan Pamuk and World Literature

Paris: Pétra, coll. "Comparative Literature / History and Criticism", 2017.

EAN 9782847431872

386 p.

Price: 25 EUR.

Publisher's overview:

Over the span of three decades, Orhan Pamuk has established himself as an essential figure in world literature. As the author of bestsellers whose releases are major publishing events, and with his works translated into more than 70 languages, he is a regular presence in Western literary and cultural news. How does an author who began writing in the mid-1970s in a developing country, in a language with very limited penetration into Western and European literary markets, and hailing from a minor literary culture largely lacking in prestige or antiquity, manage to reach the center of the literary system and conquer all the strongholds of Western consecration and recognition?

This is the question the book attempts to answer. Examining Orhan Pamuk's relationship with world literature means shedding light on the strategies of an eccentric author—a son of the Kemalist bourgeoisie deeply enamored with modern literature—who became a superstar in the global Republic of Letters, much like Salman Rushdie or Umberto Eco. While the first part places Orhan Pamuk within the hierarchical and unequal space of world literature and explores the novelist's cultural, historical, and literary heritage, the second part examines his relationship with the Western canon.

The ingenuity of this author lies in a literary strategy that functions as both an authorial strategy and a writing strategy: while the legacy of Turkish mimicry and provincialism is transformed into maximum capital for entering the global literary space, the implementation of a poetics of taklit (imitation) makes it possible to ward off the anxiety of influence and eccentricity, turning it into a new novelistic catharsis from which the persona of the Pamukian author emerges.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

PART ONE
From the Periphery to World Literature: Strategies of an Eccentric Author

1. The Heritage of Orhan Pamuk, or the "Unhappy Consciousness of the Turkish Intellectual"
A. The taklitçilik Complex
The mimetic invention of Turkish modernity
Domination, hegemony, colonial dependency: what model for conceptualizing relations with Europe?
Turkish literature's "anxiety of influence"
B. The taşralılık complex
A Francophile fervor…
… at a high narcissistic cost
"Intruders at the spectacle of modernity": the Turkish literary field in world literature
The novel as a foreign genre
C. Orhan Pamuk and the "Historical Destiny" of Turkish Letters
Far from the center: Orhan Pamuk's non-European ethos
"My Father's Suitcase," or the inherited veneration of European literature
Outside the Western European library
2. Consecration, Institutionalization, Globalization: The Trajectory of a Turkish Author in World Literature
A. 1980–2000: Pamuk's Trajectory in the Turkish Literary Field
The ethos of the secular bourgeoisie in 1950s–1960s Turkey
Claiming an autonomous position within the literary field: a Western ethos
The conquest of literary recognition within the national space
European translations and literary prizes: the conquest of legitimacy in the global system
B. Globalization and Mediatization: From Cosmopolitan Turkish Writer to Global Author
The mediatization, globalization, and planetary reach of Orhan Pamuk
The literary field in the age of global capitalism: the age of suspicion?
C. Toward World Literature: Shaping and Readjusting the Authorial Persona
Eclipsing Turkish masters
The posture of an avid reader of the Western library
The French domain
The Russian domain
The Anglophone domain
The Germanophone domain
The Hispanophone domain

PART TWO
Orhan Pamuk and the Western Canon: Writing Strategies
3. An Intertextual Poetics
A. Rewriting Thomas Mann
Cevdet Bey and His Sons: novel of origins and the origin of the Pamukian novel
The saga of the Buddenbrooks and the Işıkçıs (Cevdet Bey)
Signs of decline: the story of a family's disintegration
B. Proustian Rewritings
The (non-)reception of Proust in Turkish literature
The White Castle: a Proustian "mistranslation"
The "madeleines" of Orhan Pamuk's novels
The Black Book, the book of memory and oblivion
The Black Book: "Mademoiselle Albertine gitti!"
C. Intertextual Practice and Postmodern Games
DANTEAN SIGNPOSTS
From the Vita Nuova to Yeni Hayat
The Black Book, or the Pamukian hell
THE WESTERN CANON AND THE PROLIFERATING SEMIOSIS OF THE BLACK BOOK
The canon of European and Western literature within the rhizome of the text
Orientalization of the Western canon
CONCLUSION: POLITICS OF THE WESTERN CANON

4. Dostoevsky, or Pamuk's Russian Master
A. In the Russian Mirror
B. The Novel as an Ideological Theater of Modernity
THE NOVELISTIC CHARACTERS OF THE WESTERNIZERS
The condition of the westernized Turkish intellectual
Westernizer fanaticism and novelistic dialogism
"[Our] ends being good…": the Westernizer or the legitimation of violence
THE ANTI-WESTERN NOVELISTIC CHARACTERS
"Humiliated and Insulted"
The libidinal destiny of humiliation, between millet and cemaat
The messianic imaginary of the savior between mythification and mystification: "We are all waiting for him"
Dr. Lefin, between paranoid delirium and megalomaniacal exaltation

5. Mimicry and the Haunting of the Other: From the Anxiety of Influence to a Poetics of Taklit
A. The Poetization of a Historical Dilemma: The Other and Mimicry
Generalized questioning
The character's mimetic desire: to be the Other
Girardian mimicry, postcolonial mimicry
From nostalgia for a "pure" self to the rejection of mimicry
"A country where everything was plagiarism": a poetics of simulacra and counterfeiting
B. The Fictional Genesis of the Writing Subject
Taking the place of the Other: the carousel of the novel
Mimetic games and "playful pretense"
In the mirror of reading, oneself as another
Borrowing, stealing, plagiarizing: imitation and literary creation

Conclusion

List of Editions Used

Index

Élise Duclos, Orhan Pamuk et la littérature mondiale, Pétra, coll. "Littérature comparée / Histoire et critique", Paris, 2017, 386 pages, 25 euros.

ISBN: 9782847431872

The study of world literature frequently addresses the unequal distribution of cultural capital and the mechanisms by which authors from peripheral literary fields gain recognition in Western-dominated markets. This work examines how Orhan Pamuk, hailing from a minor literary culture, reached the center of the literary system and explores his relationship with the Western canon. It investigates how the author negotiates his position between national traditions and the global Republic of Letters, employing authorial strategies to bridge the gap between local cultural heritage and the global literary space.

The concept of mimicry, or taklit, is central to discussions regarding the anxiety of influence in non-Western literary traditions. This book examines how such strategies are transformed into a novelistic poetics, allowing the author to engage with the Western canon. By exploring intertextual relationships with authors like Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, the text illustrates how Pamuk integrates European literary models into his work. Readers interested in the intersection of postmodern narrative techniques and the politics of literary consecration may find it relevant.