La ricezione del canone europeo nel contesto turco

Considered as the pre-condition for participation in modernity, the Judaic-Christian bases of the European literary and cultural canon created many problems for the Ottomans. Their writers applied a 'pragmatical' approach, because their interest was turned in the first place to the potentiality of European narrative genres to transmit to the readers the politics of change. They therefore tried to reform the Ottoman language; to import new narrative matrix and technics, to introduce a scientific approach to the context. The debate on the creation of a new literature, founded on the European model evolved within the political and ideological framework of turchism, which, beginning from the first decade of 1900s' gave life to a national literature created around an idea of turchity as the foundation of the nation's identity. In this context there emerged the problem of preserving the nation's autenticity. Even if from different ideological postures, there prevailed the consideration of the necessity to move closer to Europe without losing the specific characteristics of the Turkish nation's culture. During the first decades of the Turkish Republic the State took direct control of the construction of an authentic Turkish culture, fully integrated into a model of European modernity. This culture had to be grounded on the Greek and Latin heredity, which permitted the realisation of a Turkish humanism, capable of ensuring the resurgence of the nation.