Abstract
THE ACT OF WRITING IN THE SHORT STORIES OF HALİT ZİYA
Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil is a writer who is widely acclaimed with his novels though he is also one of the important figures of modern Turkish short story with almost 150 short stories. The aim of this study is to analyze the representation of the modern self through the “act of writing,” the use of diaries, letters and memoirs to convey his/her inner self to the reader, the problematization of this representation, and the difference from traditional storytelling in the short stories of Halit Ziya. Some narrative features have a recurring structure in the short stories. This structure has the following three features: Many stories are a) written using an I-narrator in the form of a diary-letter or a memoir; b) framed by an I-narrator c) depict the “act of writing” as an unfinished or uncompleted task. It is claimed that these three points in the analysis correspond to the transformation of the traditional storyteller and the problematization of narration, writing and representation in Halit Ziya literature.
Keywords
Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil, short story, narrator, story teller, representation.