A REALISM-FOCUSED OVERVIEW TO PERCEPTION OF NOVEL IN PRE-REPUBLICAN ERA

While the novel genre was providing its first samples, a number of theoretical debates accompanied this process. Thus, a perception of novel develops around the emphases mentioned in the prefaces of novels, critiques and book reviews. The social, political, moral function of novel, its transformative power, and the themes such as the presentation of the reality outline this understanding. When the criticisms and the theoretical proposals for the novel are examined, it is observed that the instrumental aspect of the novel becomes of secondary importance in progress of time. One of the most important criteria that guides this maturation process, from Tanzimat authors to Halit Ziya, a Servet-I Fünun novelist, has been “realism”. Halit Ziya’s Aşk-ı Memnu (1899) presents a concrete example of the novel being a fictional product and of the realism being a methodological preference. In this article, what was understood from the novel from the early Tanzimat era to the process in which its first Western examples were written, and the opinions of the authors, who expressed their theoretical approaches by various means, are examined on the base of the progress of perception of realism.