Şehnaz Şişmanoğlu Şimşek. İki Kilise Arasında Binamaz: Karamanlıca Edebiyatta Dil, Kimlik ve Yeniden-Yazım (İstanbul: Metis Yayınları, 2024)

Abstract

The aim of this piece is to present a critical review of Şehnaz Şişmanoğlu Şimşek’s book İki Kilise Arasında Binamaz: Karamanlıca Edebiyatta Dil, Kimlik ve Yeniden-Yazım, which was published in 2024. Şimşek, adopting an interdisciplinary approach, focuses on the novel titled Temaşa-i Dünya ve Cefakâr u Cefakeş (1871-1872), which was written by Evangelinos Misailidis (1820-1890), a Turcophone Orthodox Greek born in Kula, and was published in Turkish using Greek letters in four volumes in Istanbul. Misailidis’ novel, based on O Polipathis, a novel by Grigoris Paleologos, an Istanbul Greek, published in Greek in 1830 in Athens, has been underrated and almost forgotten in the footnotes of literary histories since it was discovered and transliterated into the Latin alphabet on the grounds that it was not original but only a copy of Paleologos’ novel. However, Şimşek argues that Misailidis’ text is not simply an imitation but a re-writing quite worthy of attention. In this book, his re-writing is analyzed using a wide range of concepts and theories such as ideology and narratology.