C. Ceyhun Arslan is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Koç University and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellow at EUME and Saarland University. His book, The Ottoman Canon and the Construction of Arabic and Turkish Literatures, has been published by Edinburgh University Press. He is working on a second book tentatively entitled Becoming Mediterranean: The Sea Reconfigured in Arabic, French, and Turkish Literatures. His work has appeared in multiple journals and edited volumes such as Journal of Arabic Literature, Utopian Studies, and Comparative Literature Studies. He will soon be co-editor-in-chief of the journal Middle Eastern Literatures.

In this talk which provides an overview of C. Ceyhun Arslan’s book, The Ottoman Canon and the Construction of Arabic and Turkish Literatures. The book fleshes out the Ottoman canon’s multilingual character to call for a literary history that can reassess and even move beyond categories that many critics take for granted, such as ‘classical Arabic literature’ and ‘Ottoman literature’. It gives a historically contextualized close reading of works from authors who have been studied as pioneers of Arabic and Turkish literatures, such as Ziya Pasha (1829-1880), Jurjī Zaydān (1861-1914), Maʿrūf al-Ruṣāfī (1875-1945) and Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar (1901-1962). The Ottoman Canon analyzes how these authors prepared the arguments and concepts that shape how we study Arabic and Turkish literatures today as they reassessed the relationship among the Ottoman canon’s linguistic traditions. Furthermore, The Ottoman Canon examines the Ottoman reception of pre-Ottoman poets, such as Kaʿb ibn Zuhayr (d. ca. 646/647), hence opening up new research avenues for Arabic literature, Ottoman studies and comparative literature. It also discusses how the Ottoman canon perpetuated exclusions in terms of gender, language and religion.