The Re-Materialization of Yasar Kemal's Teneke at The Crossroads of Genres

Abstract

Yasar Kemal (1923-2015) is a leading author of Turkish literature with worldwide acclaim, whose oeuvre is regarded as the incarnation of Anatolian culture. Teneke, one of his early works, was written in 1954 and published in installments in a newspaper the very same year. Although the text appeared as a book as early as 1955, it is apparent that an indecision regarding its genre was present. Teneke, translated into English as The Drumming-Out, was addressed as a "short novel or a long novelette" on the book cover of the second edition dating from 1959. Besides, it was included in the collected short stories of the author published in 1967; however, it was excluded from the 4th edition in 1972. Therefore, this year onwards, it came into being as a separate book. But more was yet to come: In 1965, Yasar Kemal adapted the text into a play, which was staged both in Turkey and abroad. Yet this version of the text was not published for years to come. 1978 onwards, The Drumming-Out was published as a book with novel and play versions together; and since then, this format has been preserved. Its publishing history proves that, Yasar Kemal was continuously occupied with issues regarding the intersection of literary genres. The text's being fictionalized as a novel, short story, and play gradually; and it's finally being materialized as a novel and play simultaneously invites a comparative analysis. In this paper, different versions of the text are analyzed so as to discuss the author's perceptions and assumptions on genres and their reading public. For this purpose, the dissociation of contents and employment of diverse techniques specific to certain genres are investigated. As a result, the boundaries between genres and corresponding production/consumption strategies are scrutinized by examining the materialization of the same text in different forms.