The poetics and politics of Turkish literary magazines in the 1950s

This study sought to answer the question of how Turkish literary journalism affected the conditions of literary production and consumption in the 1950s. The first chapter is devoted to the survey of literature and methodological issues. According to the method specified in the first chapter, the second chapter gives comparative analysis of the poetics of five different literary magazines, namely Hisar, Mavi, Pazar Postası, Varlık and Yeditepe published in the 1950s, in order to demonstrate their specific contributions to the protection and tranformation of literary values. Since inter-journalistic relations was one of the main characteristics of the period, the third chapter deals with the relations between the magazines and literary debates on which they focused. Two conceptual frameworks indirectly related to the study of literary magazines?Jürgen Habermas? and Hannah Arendt?s notion of ?public sphere? and Bourdieu?s ?field of cultural production??have been discussed and criticized according to the empirical evidence that has been drawn from the 1950?s literary journalism. In conclusion, it is asserted that inter-journalistic relations in the 1950s?ranging from consensus to conflicts?helped literary magazines to define poetics that enabled them to fuel literary production and consumption.