Reworking ancient texts in contemporary mediterranean context: allegoric projection and utopic nostalgia in the works of Naguib Mahfouz and Pier Paolo Pasolini

Download

index.pdf

Date

2018

Author

Gündeş, Feridun

Metadata

Show full item record

Item Usage Stats

186
views

108
downloads

This study explores how the use of ancient texts in modern works of art can shed light on the lives of subaltern people in the present time. Works chosen for analysis are Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Arabian Nights” and “Gospel According to St. Matthew”, and Egyptian novelist Naguip Mahfouz’s “Arabian Days and Nights” and “Children of the Alley”. In these, two artists have a common point of referring to, and borrowing from, the same ancient texts: The Biblical-Qur’anic narratives of Abrahamic religions, and the story collection of One Thousand and One Nights. In their works, both artists depart from a sense of discontent over the current state of things, which is shaped by modernity and capitalism. Mahfouz, in his novels, explores the reasons behind the problems of present age. Fictional worlds in his works are allegoric projections of the real world. What makes real and fiction relatable to each other are the ancient texts these novels refer to. Through their employment, Mahfouz intends to help his readers understand the past more clearly. Pasolini, on the other hand, tries to find certain essences in ancient texts that are remnants of those aspects of life expelled by modernity outside the field of vision. These essences, belonging to a time when modernity and capitalism did not exist, can contain kernels of hope to help overcome status quo, and establish a new world. Thus, by using ancient texts in his films, he finds hope in the past, and establishes utopia through nostalgia.

Subject Keywords

Allegory., Utopias.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12622075/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/27276

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

THE TURKISH POSTMODERN: COMPLEXITY IN HASAN ALI TOPTAS'S NOVELS Ertuğrul, Kürşad (2019-01-01) This study explores the characteristics of postmodern complexity as a social and aesthetic condition in Turkish fiction. The reflections of this condition are intellectually registered in the novels of Turkish author Hasan Ali Toptas. His selected works are taken as representative of the postmodern avant-garde. Lyotard's reflections on the postmodern condition and the avant-garde are deployed in this analysis - in an extensive interpretation of Lyotard's analytical work, it is suggested that the postmodern ...
The Revival of romantic utopianism in rock lyrics of the 1960s Bal, Reyyan; Sönmez, Margaret Jeanne M.; Department of English Literature (2014) This study explores a mode of utopianism that manifested itself in the cultural, intellectual and poetic output of two different periods, the Romantic Age and the Sixties. The study finds this mode of utopianism, which emerged in the Romantic movement and was unconsciously revived in the Sixties counterculture, to be distinct from other utopian modes and movements, and conceptualizes it using the term re-prelapsarianism. Re-prelapsarianism, which is based upon a mystical interpretation of the Fall, involves...
The Historiographic Problem in the Renaissance Vatan Demirkan, Pelin; Boztemur, Recep; Department of History (2023-3-22) This thesis aims to analyze some characteristics of history writing in the Renaissance era as an overlooked concept of the subject. In the literature, the period is perceived either in too romantic or too critical perspectives. The former side views the era as the emergent movement of modern European culture, without analyzing its Medieval characteristics. On the other hand, the latter side tends to underestimate the significant features of this era, mostly because of romantic perspective’s effect. Neverthe...
Rereading Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and Richard II : Wesker's The Merchant and Ioneco's Exit the King Altındağ, Zümrüt; Norman, Ünal; Department of Foreign Language Education (2004) This thesis is a comparative study of how Shakespeare̕s ideas transcend the boundaries of his own time and still remain as the major sources of inspiration for modern dramatists. Arnold Wesker and Eugéne Ionesco explore the concept of the "other" leading to loss of identity and awareness of non-being embedded in Shakespeare̕s works. The main argument is that the contemporary playwrights reinterpret Shakespeare̕s works in the light of some modern issues and ideas to reveal the entrapment of the individual.
The Spatial turn in contemporary Irish poetry of Seamus Heaney and Ciaran Carson Doğan, Buket; Birlik, Nurten; Department of English Literature (2018) This study discusses the process of places becoming spatialized and of frozen identities turning into mobile subjectivities in Seamus Heaney and Ciaran Carson’s later poetry against the background of the changing conceptions of space, subjectivity, land, history and identity. To analyse their response to the spatial turn and their treatment of place and space in the wake of seminal developments in domestic and international affairs starting with the early 1990s, the theoretical framework in this study emplo...

Citation Formats

F. Gündeş, “Reworking ancient texts in contemporary mediterranean context: allegoric projection and utopic nostalgia in the works of Naguib Mahfouz and Pier Paolo Pasolini,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2018.