The dynamics of visuality in Viçen Tilkiyan's Şarkta Alafranga (1867) and Gülinya (1868)

The study examines the dynamics of visuality in Viçen Tilkiyan's Şarkta Alafranga Yahut Ticaretimizin Daralmasının Asıl Sebepleri (1867) and Gülinya Yahut Kendi Görünmeyerek Herkesi Gören Bir Kız (1868). Elements of visuality and ways of seeing are constitutive in both narratives. In the chapter where I discuss Şarkta Alafranga Yahut Ticaretimizin Daralmasının Asıl Sebepleri, I argue that this text, as a first text, contains the cores of dynamics of visuality that will emerge in Tilkiyan's other texts. In the chapter where I analyze the novel Gülinya Yahut Kendi Görünmeyerek Herkesi Gören Bir Kız, I discuss the ways of seeing in the novel around concepts such as power, performance, control, morality, corporeality, different states of subjectivity, and spectacle. I argue that the effect of visuality on the plot and the way of seeing of the main character, the observer-narrator Gülinya, is parallel to the novel's genre demand based on violating the intimate. In addition, the entire narrative corresponds to Gülinya's emotional and sexual maturation process. In addition to close readings of the two narratives, taking into account Tilkiyan's other works that could not be included in this study, it should be noted that modes of seing and the visual technologies of the period play an important role in Tilkiyan's literary world. The aim of this study is to make a start towards analyzing this relationship in the imagination of Tilkiyan, a writer of the Tanzimat period who wrote during an important period of 19th century (1865-1881) when the visuality began to influence literature.