From oblivion to canon Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

The aim of this study is to examine the canonisation process of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, a poet, novelist, literary historian and academic who lived between 1901 and 1962. Although Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar was ignored during his lifetime and after his death, he has become a canonical author since the 1980s. During his lifetime, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar wrote articles reflecting the debates of the period in both popular magazines and best-selling newspapers, but he did not become an influential writer in the field of literature. After his death in 1962, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar was not remembered outside a narrow circle and was generally presented as a "cultural nationalist" poet. Similarly, despite some controversies in the 1970s, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar remained a peripheral writer until the 1980s. However, from the 1980s onwards, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar was brought to the forefront as a "modernist" writer, interest in his novels increased and the process of becoming a canonical writer began. In the 2000s, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar was recognised as a canonical author of Turkish literature, leading to "copyright wars" between publishing houses. The fact that Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar received no attention either during his lifetime or after his death, but became a canonical author from the 1980s onwards requires a detailed analysis of this process. In this study, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar's canonisation process is divided into three periods. The first one is the presentation of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar as a "cultural nationalist", followed by the beginning of the canonisation process in the 1980s and finally his transformation into a canonical figure in the 2000s. The focus is on how Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar's works were circulated, how they remained in circulation and how they were received in these three periods. The publishing houses that published his works during these periods and the influence of publishing houses on both the reception and canonisation of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar are also included. In addition, how the work of the critics who determined the image of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar in the field of literature from 1963 onwards influenced the canonisation process is discussed in detail.