Abstract
Pushing further in the direction of reading content and the messages that sustained the drive for literacy in the late Ottoman and early Republican periods, this chapter identifies four thematic tensions facing young readers. Each of these pairings — the religious and the secular; the family and the nation state; the new and the old and the global and the local — affords the opportunity to highlight the contrasts that played such a major role in establishing the didactic certainty prevalent in the children’s literature of this period. At the same time these pair-ings also reveal the ambiguities that undermined these seemingly clear- cut binaries against the background of the changes affecting the late Ottoman and early Republican periods. The chapter shows not only the range of genre, politicization, humor and geographical references on display in this rapidly expanding literature but also the extent to which readers’ choices were beginning to be dictated as much by the market as by the pedagogical imperatives of officialdom, whether Ottoman or Republican. The shifting context surrounding the publication of reading materials intended for the young comes through clearly as the chapter examines each of these thematic categories in turn.
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Notes
Cüneyd Okay, Eski Harfli Çocuk Dergileri (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 1999), 23–4.
Ahmed Cevad, Yeni elifbâ[:] Kurani okuyorum (Istanbul: Matbaa-i Amire, 1342[1926]).
Robert G. Landen, “The Ottoman home front: a German correspondent’s remarks, 1917,” in Camron M. Amin, Benjamin C. Fortna and Elizabeth B. Frierson, eds., The Modern Middle East: A Sourcebook for History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 441–43.
Frédéric Hitzel, “Manuscrits, livres et culture livresque à Istanbul,” REMMM 87–88 (1999), 24.
Carter V. Findley, Ottoman Civil Officialdom: A Social History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 22–3.
Martyn Lyons, “New Readers in the Nineteenth Century: Women, Children, Workers,” in Cavallo and Chartier, eds., A History of Reading in the West, Linda G. Cochrane, trans. (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 327.
Ahmed Rasim, Kiraat kitabi (Istanbul: 1314[1898]), 2–4.
Ali irfan [Eğribozu], Vatam seven okusun (Dersaadet: Mahmud Bey Matbaasi, 1324[1908]), 3–4.
Ahmed Midhat, Terbiyeli çocuk Mubtediler için kiraat kitabi (Istanbul: Kirkambar Matbaasi, 1303[1887]), 4.
M. Safvet, Kiraat (Kostantiniye: Matbaa-yi Ebuzziya, 1308[1892]), 5.
Faik Reşat, Kiraat (Istanbul: Karabet, 1313[1897]).
Ahmed Rasim, Kizlara mahsus kiraat kitabi (Istanbul: Karabet, 1316[1900]), 21–2.
Ali İrfan, Ma’lumat-i diniye (Istanbul: Şirket-i Muretibbiye Matbaasi, 1329[1911]), 1.
Erol Köroğlu, Türk Edebiyati ve Birinci Dünya Savaşi (1914–1918): Propagandadan Millî Kimlik İnşasina (Istanbul: İletişim, 2004), 135–7.
Jessica Selma Tiregöl, “The Role of Primary Education in Nation-state- building: The Case of the Early Turkish Republic,” (PhD Diss., Princeton University, 1998), 114–16. I am grateful to Şükrü Hanioğlu for bringing this work to my attention.
Leyla Neyzi, “Object or Subject? The Paradox of ‘Youth,” in Turkey IJMES 33 (2001), 416.
Paul Dumont, “La literature enfantine turque,” in Paul Dumont, ed., Turquie: Livres d’hier livres d’aujourd’hui (Istanbul: Isis, 1992), 79.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Nutuk (Istanbul: Bordo Siyah Klasik Yayinlar, 2007), 798–9.
Ali Nazima, Oku yahud yeni risale-i ahlâk ve vezaif-i etfal (Read, or the new treatise on morals and children’s duties) (Istanbul: Kasbar Matbaasi, 1320[1904]),
Ahmed Cevad, Cumhuriyet çocuklarina Türkçe kiraat. ilk mektep, birinci sinif. (Istanbul: Marifet Matbaasi, 1929), 3.
Paul Dumont, “La literature enfantine turque,” in Paul Dumont, ed., Turquie: Livres d’hier livres d’aujourd’hui (Istanbul: Isis, 1992), 79.
Büşra Ersanli Behar, iktidar ve Tarih: Türkiye’de “Resmi Tarih” Tezinin Oluşumu (Istanbul: AFA Yayinlari, 1992); Navaro-Yashin, Faces, 48.
Ahmed Rasim, Doğru usûl-i kiraat 5. Kisim (Istanbul: Kanaat Kitaphanesi, 1926), 55–7.
On the subject of cartography and political affiliation in the Ottoman and Turkish context, see Etienne Copeaux, Espaces et temps de la nation turque: Analyse d’une historiographice nationaliste, 1931–1993 (Paris: CNRS Editions, 1997) and Fortna, “Change in the School Maps of the Late Ottoman Empire,” Imago Mundi 57:1 (2005), 23–34.
Sadrettin Celal, Cümhuriyet Çocuklarina Sevimli Kiraat (Istanbul: Kanaat Kütüphanesi, 1928), 4–8.
Cüneyd Okay, Osmanli Çocuk Hayatinda Yenileşmeler, 1850–1900 (Istanbul: Kirkambar Yayinlari, 1998).
Guzine Dino, La genèse du roman turc au XIXe siècle. (Paris: Publications Orientalistes de France, 1973), 45 and Güzine Dino, “Le cycle urbain de la Hikaye,” in R Dor and M Nicolas, eds., Quand le crible était dans la paille … Homage à Pertev Naili Boratav (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1978), 152.
Serdar Öztürk, “Efforts to Modernize Chapbooks during the Initial Years of the Turkish Republic,” European Historical Quarterly 40 (2010), 7–34.
Seyhan Kübra Esmer, “Cumhuriyet Dönemi’nin ilk Yillarinda (1923–1928) Yayimlayan Çocuk Dergilerindeki Tahkiyeli Metinlerin Çocuklara Değer Aktarimi Açisindan Değerlendirilmesi” MA Thesis. (Gazi University, 2007), 131. Interestingly, the forever-unattainable figure of Leyla reappears metaphorically at the time of Republic’s seventy-fifth anniversary celebrations as a symbol for a poet’s dream of the Republic that remains equally elusive. Leyla Neyzi, “Object or Subject?,” 425–6.
Paul Dumont, “Si Evliya Çelebi visitait le turquie d’aujourd’hui…,” in Paul Dumont, ed., Turquie: Livres d’hier livres d’aujourd’hui (Istanbul: Isis, 1992), vi–vii. There will be more to say about the ways in which printed books supplanted manuscripts in Chapter 5.
On printing in the Ottoman Empire, see Klaus Kreiser, The Beginnings of Printing in the Near and Middle East: Jews, Christians and Muslims (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz in Kimmission, 2001), Sinan Kuneralp, “Les debuts de l’imprimerie à Istanbul, 1800–1908,” in Paul Dumont, ed., Turquie: Livres d’hier, livres d’aujourd’hui (Istanbul: Editions Isis, 1992), 1–4.
M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 29 ff. In Hanioğlu’s sampling of the inheritance (tereke) registers for the Hicrî years 1164 (1750–1751) and 1215 (1800–1801), only one person bequeathed more than ten books and many, including the only teenager listed, had none.
Frédéric Hitzel, “Manuscrits, livres et culture livresque à Istanbul,” REMMM 87–88 (1999), 31.
Ahmed Rasim, İlaveli hazine-i mekâtib yahud mükemmel münşeât (Istanbul: Feridiye Matbaasi, 1318[1902]).
Ahmed Cevad, Çocuklara sarf ve nahv dersleri: Turkçe okuyorum (Istanbul: Matbaa-i Hayriye, 1326[1910]), 3–4.
Tüccarzâde ibrahim Hilmi, Altin Kitab[:] Çocuklara ilk kiraat (Istanbul: 1327[1911]), 3, 9, 10.
For a more detailed treatment of maps in the service of late Ottoman education, see Fortna, “Change in the School Maps of the Late Ottoman Empire,” Imago Mundi: The International Journal for the History of Cartography 57:1 (2005): 23–34.
Ahmed Rasim, Kiraat kitabi. Birinci sene. (Istanbul: Karabet Matbaasi, 1313[1897]), 6.
Faik Sabri [Duran], Çocuklara ilk cografya kiraatlari (Istanbul: Marifet Matbaasi, 1926).
Tüccarzâde ibrahim Hilmi, Altm Kitab[:] Çocuklara ilk kiraat (Istanbul: Kitabhane-i Askeri: 1327[1911], 35.
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© 2011 Benjamin C. Fortna
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Fortna, B.C. (2011). Context and Content. In: Learning to Read in the Late Ottoman Empire and the Early Turkish Republic. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230300415_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230300415_3
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