Literature: Textual, Contextual, Conceptual Concerns in Contemporary Literary and Cultural Productions

This volume of the Synergy Literature series explores largely contemporary cultural and literary productions in the English language. Focusing primarily-but not only-on novel, drama and poetry, our authors offer fresh insights on a broad range of literary works, along with impactful social movements and works of popular culture. With these contributions, we hope to start new conversations and help open up new alleys of investigation in the field of literary studies.

We would like to express our deepest gratitude to the authors of this volume and to the academic support so generously provided by Assoc. Prof. Gökşen Aras, Dr. Zeynep Rana Turgut, Dr. Duru Güngör and Dr. Duygu Serdaroğlu.

Kuğu Tekin / Seda Kuşçu Özbudak (Eds.)

Kuğu Tekin graduated from the Department of English Language and Literature, Atılım University in 2001. She received her M.A. in English Literature from Atılım University in 2003 and her PhD from Middle East Technical University in 2010. The title of her doctoral dissertation is Parody in the Context of Salman Rushdie’s Magical Realistic Fiction: Midnight’s Children, The Moor’s Last Sigh, and Shalimar the Clown. She is currently teaching at Atılım University in the Department of English Language and Literature. Her current areas of interest are postcolonial literature, contemporary British fiction, immigrant literature and urban studies. She has published several articles and chapters in national and international journals and books.

Seda Kuşçu Özbudak graduated from Gazi University English Language Teaching Department in 2009. She was awarded the Fulbright Scholarship in 2010 and taught Turkish as a foreign language at the University of Massachusetts. With her thesis in the same field, she received her M.A. from Ankara University Social Sciences Institute Foreign Language Teaching Programme in 2013. Then she obtained her PhD from Gazi University Translation and Cultural Studies Program in 2018. Since 2012, she has been working as a lecturer at Gazi University and since 2018 she has been the vice director of the Academic Writing Application and Research Centre. Her current research interests lie in the fields of audiovisual translation; translation of Turkish audiovisual products, subtitling on video-on-demand platforms, and audience research.

This volume of the Synergy Literature series is intended to provide the authors a free platform where they can realise their creative potentials without being confined to a specific theme or title. Thus, the editors issued an invitation to select scholars to write chapters on contemporary literary and cultural productions in English. It is our hope that the resulting ten chapters forming this volume will address the audience’s various field of specific interests and concerns and open up new areas of focus.

As the readers will see, the chapters included in this volume tackle a broad range of periods, works and themes. Leyla Adıgüzel’s chapter explores multiple universes in Matt Haig’s sci-fi novel Midnight Library (2020). Emine Seda Çağlayan Mazanoğlu discusses Simon Stephens’ play titled Pornography (2007), claiming that the playwright’s aim is to draw the audience’s attention to the prejudiced unjust treatment of immigrants all around the world. Onur Çiffiliz discusses defamiliarisation as a method with reference to Matt Haig’s novel The Humans (2013). Nilay Erdem Ayyıldız offers a chapter on gender dichotomies in classical fairy tales through her analysis of Diana Wynne Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle (1986). Ayşe Gül Fidan’s chapter offers a biographical study on the 19th century Iranian proto-feminist writer, Bibi Khanum Astarabadi. Although the author’s work is not based on a contemporary figure, her chapter is accepted because women’s questions still concern almost all female populations in the world. Duru Güngör’s chapter offers satirical representations of social injustice in the influential American animated series South Park, parting from Peter Sloterdijk’s identification of cynicism as the defining state of contemporary consciousness, and his distinction between cynical vs kynical forms of humour. Merve Sarı Tüzün investigates postmodern playfulness in Jasper Fforde’s novel titled The Big Over Easy (2005). While blurring the distinction between fantasy and detective fiction, Fforde makes the familiar unfamiliar to his readers. Duygu Serdaroğlu provides the reader with a feminist reading of Rupi Kaur’s collection of insta poetry titled milk and honey (2014). Zeynep Rana Turgut’s chapter focuses on global immigrant mobility, its causes and aftereffects regarding Rawi Hage’s novel titled Cockroach (2008). Victoria Bilge Yılmaz discusses the existential anxieties of modern man in Tom Murphy’s play Alice Trilogy (2005).

The authors of the chapters are responsible for the ideas and discussions in the works they present.

Leyla Adıgüzel¹