Mythology as a Literary Source in Ahmet Midhat Efendi's Taaffüf Novel

Abstract

Ahmet Midhat Efendi, one of the versatile writers of Turkish literature, saw mythology as a spring that feeds literary works and drew attention to the importance of mythology in the series of articles he wrote in periodicals. In his novel Taaffüf, which was published as a book in 1895, the author preferred the method of telling the conflict of the heroine (Sâniha) with ancient representations and tried to exemplify how mythology can be used in the novel genre. In the novel, the heroine's struggle in her married life is told through two characters of Roman mythology. Sâniha's this struggle between being chaste and not being chaste is also considered as a global issue and was associated with the opposition between Venus and Minerva. Sâniha, who obtained knowledge of painting, sculpture and mythology through Râsih, who is the voice of the author, re-established the balance of love and loyalty in marriage, not as dysfunctional decorations in the novel, but as Minerva's victory in the struggle between Venus and Minerva, which gained importance as two opposite points of the fundamental conflict. The study aims to analyse how the author includes mythology in the narrative and the ways of constructing the thought in the novel of Taaffüf, which is a projection of Ahmet Midhat Efendi's views on mythology.