Daily life in the Turkish novel of Tanzimat period

This doctoral thesis aims to examine the literary representations of daily life in the Turkish novels of the Tanzimat period. The central premise of the thesis is to reveal how the effects of modernization on Ottoman society are reflected in the daily life practices of individuals and how these reflections are constructed in literary texts. Daily life is approached as a multifaceted field that encompasses social structures, ideological tendencies, and individual subjectivities behind behaviors that may seem like ordinary actions. The theoretical foundation of the research is based on the approaches of thinkers such as Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, Walter Benjamin, Pierre Bourdieu, Erving Goffman, and Agnes Heller, who have contributed to the sociology of daily life. In this context, the historical transformation of daily life, its relationship with social structures, and its impact on individual experiences have been evaluated at the theoretical level; the accumulated knowledge has served as a guide in the literary text analysis. The study employs a descriptive analysis technique, a qualitative research method, to examine the novels of the Tanzimat period both structurally and thematically. The works of significant authors of the period, including Ahmet Mithat Efendi, are analyzed; elements of daily life such as the social position of women, family relationships, household organization, space usage, clothing, educational understanding, professions, modes of transportation, entertainment culture, eating rituals, and etiquette are classified under thematic headings. The findings suggest that Tanzimat period novels not only reflect individual lives but also serve as multilayered texts that convey the social, cultural, and ideological dynamics of the period. Through the depiction of daily life, the changing family structure, female identity, consumption habits, and the transformation of value systems have been analyzed in detail. In conclusion, this thesis argues that in the Tanzimat period novels, daily life is a space that shapes social structures and individual subjectivity, where cultural and social norms are reproduced, and reveals the unseen, that is, the underlying social dynamics beneath the visible. In this regard, the study aims to contribute to the literature-sociology axis of research that focuses on daily life.