Seslerin Çarpışması: Iris Murdoch'ın Rahibeler ve Askerler Romanında Kadınların Sesleri

Seslerin/benlerin yaratılmasının önemini derinden anlayan bir yazar olan Iris Murdoch, çoğunlukla romanlarında zamansız bir insan gerçeğini keşfeder. Bakhtin, “diyalojik” ya da “karnavalesk” olarak tanımladığı demokratik bir dili anlatmaya yönelik bir çerçeve geliştirmiştir ve içinde birçok sesi barındıran bir diyaloğun yer aldığı bir dünya umudunu taşımıştır. Bakhtin’in en önemli katkılarından biri “polifoni”, “çokseslilik” kavramıdır. Bakhtin polifonik romanın “tamamıyla diyalojik olduğunu” ileri sürmektedir. (Bakhtin, 1973, p. 40). Bakhtin’e göre kültür dili, kesişen dillerin - sınıf, meslek, aktivite, nesil, cinsiyet, bölge - kullanımı ve çok çeşitli etkileşim anlamları ile doludur. Iris Murdoch’ın Nuns and Soldiers (Rahibeler ve Askerler) romanı etik, ahlaki ve felsefi konularla ilgili olarak sıklıkla incelenmiştir. Bununla birlikte, bu konuların kadın karakterler için nasıl ses bulduğunu keşfetmek de önemlidir. Bu sebeple, bu makalenin amacı Iris Murdoch’ın Nuns and Soldiers adlı romanında yer alan kadın karakterlerin seslerini Mikhail Bakhtin’in roman kuramı ışığında incelemektir.

Combat of Voices: Female Voices in Iris Murdoch’s Nuns and Soldiers

Iris Murdoch, a writer with a profound understanding of the importance of creating voices/selves, often explored human truths that are timeless in her novels. Bakhtin developed a frame of work in which he mainly aimed at describing a democratic language which was “dialogical” or “carnivalesque”. A world of interchange, of a dialogue between many voices is what Bakhtin hoped for. One of the great contributions of Bakhtin is the concept of polyphony (multivocality or multi-voicedness). He suggests that “the polyphonic novel as a whole is thoroughly dialogical” (Bakhtin, 1973, p. 40). To Bakhtin the language of a culture is full of intersecting language uses - those of class, profession, activity, generation, gender, region and a rich variety of interacting significances. Iris Murdoch’s novel Nuns and Soldiers has often been studied in relation to the ethical, moral and philosophical issues; however, it is also significant to explore how these issues are voiced for female characters. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to explore the voices of female characters in Iris Murdoch’s Nuns and Soldiers on the basis of Bakhtinian theory of the novel.

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