Fez-wearing monkeys: Evolution literature and literary evolution from the Late Ottoman to the Early Republic

Based on five fictional texts written over the course of forty years, i.e., Bir Acibe-i Saydiye (1894), Goriller İçinde (1898), Tekâmül (1898), Maymun'un Defteri (1922) ve İnsan Önce Maymun muydu? (1934), this study proposes to reconceptualize Ottoman modernization through evolutionary concepts such as tekâmül, terakkî, and taklit. It also offers to rethink this process in relation to and beyond dichotomies of human vs. animal or human vs. ape. Furthermore, this study pursues the possibility of a non-anthropocentric reading of the Ottoman literature through discussions on evolutionary ideas and ape representations by animal studies. With reference to the fictional Ottoman characters who envision themselves as intermediate species stuck in the ape body and mind in comparison to their European and American counterparts who have reached humanity by completing their evolution, this thesis rephrases Gayatri Spivak's famous question and asks: "Can the monkey speak?" Through the lens of subaltern and animal theories, it aims to interpret the characters such as Congolese natives who transform into gorillas in front of white men who went on a gorilla hunt, the Ottoman intellectual who developed the ability to communicate with gorillas when imprisoned in a cage in the Paris Zoo, the Ottoman guy who was used for breeding the perfect American race or the one that sees himself as a Darwinian pantheist ape. One of the main arguments of the thesis is that the Darwinian idea of evolution -which caused heated debates in the newspapers of the period- also manifested itself in the field of fiction and that the texts written to defend or criticize this idea can be categorized as evolution literature under science fiction. Another argument is that Ottoman and early Republican literature, which have been subjected to the ebb and flow of evolution and revolution, can be read in conjunction with Franco Moretti's terminology such as natural selection, adaptation, and species diversity, who presented a sketch of the Darwinian theory of literary evolution. Thus, this thesis opens the door to study both the history of literature and the texts that make up this literature in connection with the idea of evolution from apes to humans, from nature to culture, and from traditional to modern. Keywords: Evolution literature, literary Darwinism, animal studies, Ottoman novel, primate representations