The Bildungsroman in contemporary Turkish novels

The concept of Bildungsroman entered literary history with Wilhelm Dilthey's essay "Hölderlin," one of the works he compiled in 1906. In Turkish, it corresponds to different meanings such as "formation," "development," and "education." In Turkish literature, Gürsel Aytaç uses the expression "oluşum roman" (formation novel) as the Turkish equivalent of the Bildungsroman concept. As a literary genre, it emerged in 18th-century Europe, in Germany, closely linked to Enlightenment philosophy and modernity. With the Enlightenment, human reason needed the ability to comprehend the world it lived in. At this point, the aim was to cultivate individuals who prioritized reason. Therefore, the struggle between the individual's free will and conformity to societal expectations is reflected in the genre known as the Bildungsroman. The term "bildungsroman" emerged particularly as a definition in Goethe's "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahe" (Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship Years), published between 1794 and 1796. Bildungsroman can be defined as a literary genre focusing on the protagonist's inner development and relationship with society, from childhood and adolescence to maturity. This study examines how the thematic elements of the "formation novel" tradition have taken shape in contemporary Turkish novels, particularly through selected biographical works/novels from 1951-2014. Biographical novels, while documenting the life story of a real person, also focus on the protagonist's personal development from childhood to maturity, their search for identity, and their interaction with social conditions. Thus, it is observed that contemporary Turkish novels share similar characteristics with the Bildungsroman. This study evaluates the coming-of-age journeys of male and female protagonists in selected biographical novels by authors such as Mehmet Emin Erişirgil, Tahir Alangu, Hıfzı Topuz, Oğuz Atay, Ayşe Kulin, and Murat Koç, based on the thematic elements and apprenticeship model of the Bildungsroman. It shows that the personal development stages of the protagonists examined in biographical novels generally progress in connection with socio-political awareness, modernization processes, and historical turning points. It emphasizes that the protagonists at the center of these novels not only undergo personal transformation during their upbringing from childhood to adulthood, but also that the social structure, political pressures, cultural conflicts, and social inequalities of their time play an active role in shaping their characters. In this respect, it is determined that the Bildungsroman genre in contemporary Turkish novels offers unique examples that draw attention to both individual and social factors in biographical novels.