The genius Loci in the Work of Bilge Karasu: Narratological worlds of the Garden of Departed Cats

This thesis uses the narratological method to examine the thirteen stories of Bilge Karasu's collection The Garden of Departed Cats. In the analysis of the stories, the spatial dimension of the narrative has been especially taken into consideration. In the thesis, the three basic questions focused on are as follows: How has space been designed in the stories? What is the contribution made to the plot by the fictitious worlds that result from this design? What is the impact of the narrated worlds on the narrated characters and on readers? Assessing this work from the standpoint of spatial dimensions reveals interesting results, the most important of which are the deep meanings built up by Karasu upon fluctuating degrees of spacing. The author, by means of distances, zooms in and out on such binary oppositions as "I" and "the other" in search of the possibility of the unification of differences. As such, spaces of encounter and reunion are created between the "there" in sociological, psychological, and ontological terms and all that is "the other". These spaces, which can be considered "liminal" grounds, are, within the story, the Garden and, beyond the story, the text itself.