A Reading of the Late 19th-Century İstanbul Public Life and Space Through the Tanzimat Novel

Abstract

The modernization attempts in the Ottoman Empire began in the 18th century and accelerated in the 19th century with the Tanzimat Charter (1839). This charter was for regulating the governmental issues, the physical environment, and the social rights of the society. The center of these regulations was the capital city, Istanbul. So, the physical and social landscape of the city began to change rapidly in the 19th century. Hence, the impacts of these transformations began to be observed in daily life, especially in public spaces. The transformations in the physical environment include construction of new building types and activity spaces as well as the transformation of old areas for new uses. This thesis focuses on the public side of these transformations and attempt to understand how these spaces were perceived through the analysis of twenty-one contemporary novels, which have been acknowledged within the genre of Tanzimat Novels by the literary critics. The objective is to analyze the relation between the public spaces of Istanbul and the spatial practices that are depicted in these novels. Significantly, the thesis attempts to explore how social class and gender differences are portrayed in the narrative discourse.