At the margins of Turkish poetry field: A Comparative study on the literary transfers of futurism and surrealism (1925-1970)

This study investigates the historical conditions of differentiation in the outcomes of literary transfer processes. To this end, it compares the literary transfers of Futurism and Surrealism into the Turkish poetry field. Drawing on the main insights from Pierre Bourdieu's Field Theory, I construct a theoretical prism, namely, the "triadic prism", which formulates the literary transfer processes through three parameters: the level of field fragmentation, the actors' political autonomy/heteronomy, and the existence of literary networks. By providing a historical sociological analysis of the Turkish poetry field through this triadic prism, I arrive at two significant conclusions. First, the low level of field fragmentation is historically the key to the widespread circulation of the transferred templates. Second, the explanatory potential of the political determinations is found to be limited, and it is concluded that these determinations have to be conjoined by the actors' literary networks and social connectedness. In light of these findings, I critically engage with the theoretically magnified determinative role of political factors on cultural processes. I also propose a genuine inclusion of social networks into the Bourdieusian theoretical framework.