(Sotto)Testi e Sotterranei Della Città. Collezionare Istanbul da Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar a Orhan Pamuk

The article examines the motif of collecting as a recurring literary theme in Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar and Orhan Pamuk’s poetics of Istanbul. Through the comparison between two of their most important novels – Tanpınar’s Huzur (1949; A Mind at Peace, 2008) and Pamuk’s Kara Kitap (1990; The Black Book,1994) I will try to illustrate how this motif, which is intimately connected to the use of memory as a key notion in literary representation of urban space, constitutes a common feature in the works of both the authors but also a distinctive trait related to the way they approach the issues of Ottoman historical and cultural tradition and its controversial legacy