The Confession of the Other: Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Bu çalışma, İngiliz Romantik yazarı Susan Evance’ın Melankoliye sonesini, melankolik yazıya hâkim olan yazar kişiliği ve bu kişiliğin melankolik zihninin temsili açısından analiz eder. Çalışma, örtük yazarın melankoliyi, günümüzün ve geçmiş dönemlerin melankolik yazarlarına özgü bir tür bozukluk ya da hastalıktan ziyade bir ruh hali olarak deneyimlediğini öne sürer. Bu nedenle, yazar melankoliyi şiirin anlatısında yaratıcı bir araç ve şiirsel bir ilham kaynağı ile Romantik bir yazar olarak kendini gerçekleştirmenin temel bir yolu olarak uygular. Bu melankolik ruh halinin edebi temsili böylelikle yazar kişiliğin kasıtlı olarak sadece kendi adına değil, aynı zamanda hem örtük hem de tarihsel okurlar adına da bilinçli bir biçimde melankoliye bürünmesine neden olur. Şiirsel kişilik, sanatsal potansiyelini ortaya çıkarabilmek ve kendini gerçekleştirebilmek amacıyla ötekinden kaçar ve toplumu reddeder; estetik sebepler ve edebi kaygılarla bilinçli melankolik bir kopuş yaşar. Bu durum melankolik ıstırabın bütüncül bir öznel deneyim olarak yalnızca kişisel bir sorun olmaktan ziyade daha çok toplumsal bir sorun haline gelmesine neden olur. Julia Kristeva ve Karen Horney’in terminolojisini baz alan bu çalışma melankoliyi metinsel bir mod ve öz-yabancılaşmayı ortadan kaldıran ancak bunun yanında toplumsal bir yabancılaşmayı beraberinde getiren geçici bir ruh hali olarak analiz eder.

The Confession of the Other: Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist

This paper analyses the sonnet To Melancholy by the English Romantic writer Susan Evance in terms of the representation of the melancholic mind of the authorial persona. The study suggests that the implied author experiences melancholy as a form of mood state rather than a type of disorder or disease peculiar to the melancholic writers of the present and the past. Therefore, the author applies melancholy as a creative instrument and poetic inspiration in the narrative of the poem and a principal way to self-actualize as a Romantic writer. The literary representation of a melancholic mood thus causes the authorial persona to melancholize deliberately not only for her own sake, but also for the sake of both implied and historical readerships. With the aim of realizing her artistic potential, the poetic persona withdraws from the other and rejects society, experiencing a deliberate melancholy detachment for aesthetic reasons and a literary concern. This causes the subjective experience of melancholic suffering to turn out to be a social problem rather than simply a personal issue. Using the terminology of Julia Kristeva and Karen Horney, the paper analyses melancholy as a textual mode and a transient mood that removes self-estrangement but brings about social alienation.

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