The Carriage Affair, or the Birth of a National Hero

The Carriage Affair, written in the late 19th century and regarded as a “canoni- cal” work of Turkish literature, is the parody of a mimic man produced by the Ottoman reform. The author Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem breaks with the familiar moralistic criticisms of the “Westernized snob”, which constituted a genre in the late 19th and early 20th century novel, and produces a surprisingly modern and lively literary text. Inventing interior monologue in a fascinating parody of the protagonist (who imitates the plot of the French popular romantic novel), while courageously dismissing the moral and logical alternative of a national subject of “true” mimesis, he also takes the risk of miming mimesis and falling into a void. According to standard literary judgment, the result is his failure to produce a pro- per narrative closure, to pass from mimesis to diegesis, i.e. to resolve the conflict which constructs the story. Reading the novel through its critical readings as well as a detailed discussion of the concepts of parody, mimesis and femininity, I argue that there is a paradoxical success in Ekrem’s failure. This unexpected literary work of its times virtually prefigures and preempt the later nation building in the 20th century. Most important of all, it demonstrates that any effort of representation and writing is always performed on a shifting ground.