“Istanbul 1940 and Global Modernity: The World According to Auerbach, Tanpınar, and Edib engages Erich Auerbach’s Istanbul career and his pioneering works of comparative literature in a new light.” One must keep in mind that Auerbach is one of the founders of modern Turkish university. He is one the German Jewish scholars that came to Turkey in the years of 1933-1934 after having been expelled from their positions at the German university by the Nazi regime. The book “interprets Auerbach’s works against the background of his Turkish colleagues’ analogous works that, like Auerbach’s masterpieces, were drafted at Istanbul University in the 1940s. Unlike Auerbach’s writings, which center around Western literary cultures and Christianity, these Turkish writings trace non-Western, largely Islamicate cultural histories. The critic, novelist, and poet Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar (1901–1962) and his illustrious senior, the Muslim feminist, humanist, and novelist Halide Edib (1884–1964) focused on Middle Eastern and South Asian cultural trajectories. In addition to offering groundbreaking insights into their respective cultural legacies, Auerbach, Tanpınar, and Edib elaborated extensively on the intercrossing that is their meeting place, the chiasmic space of modern literature. Interpreting their writings as the work of a collective, Istanbul 1940 and Global Modernity examines the new paths these critics opened for theorizing literary modernity, world literature, and the comparative study of literature and religion.”
“ Istanbul 1940 And Global Mordernity ” by Efe Khayyat
