East West Mimesis

Kader Konuk puts forward a provocative argument: that modern Turkish identity was not solely established by Kemalist cadres, but that German-Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution, who were privileged foreigners within Turkish society, played a significant role in its construction. At the heart of the book are Erich Auerbach, who left Germany in 1936 to head the newly established School of Foreign Languages at Istanbul University, and his groundbreaking work Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, written during this period. Konuk examines the context in which this work was written, focusing on how Istanbul shaped Auerbach's process of writing Mimesis. She demonstrates that Mimesis stands before us as a work that allows us to understand Turkey's humanist reform movement within a framework of cultural mimesis. This book, which enables us to comprehend Turkey's cultural history by using concepts of literary criticism in a fertile and creative way, also brings a brand new approach to studies on East-West relations.