Tr From Canonical Autobiography to Autofictional Narrative: Identity and Fictionality in Demir Özlü’s Ithaka’ya Yolculuk

Identity and Fictionality

Abstract

With postmodern writers’ deliberate play with fictionality and their conscious display of this play within their works, narrative genres that traditionally carry a claim to truth—such as the historical novel or the (auto)biography—have undergone a process of re-evaluation, not only in terms of form but also regarding the critical approaches applied to them. In recent years, there has been a growing focus on the emergence of a form of writing that no longer seeks to be postmodern. Studies concentrating on this new writing—shaped around a renewed search for reality and proposing post-postmodern modes of writing—have markedly increased, albeit with variations from country to country. Autofiction, described by Philippe Lejeune as both a new “mode of writing” and a new “mode of reading,” occupies a central place within these discussions. Demir Özlü’s novel İthaka’ya Yolculuk (Journey to Ithaca), written by one of the key figures of the 1950s generation in Turkish literature, exemplifies this new mode of writing and, consequently, this new mode of reading. This study aims to demonstrate—drawing on the author’s memoirs, correspondence, and the recollections of his siblings who were close witnesses to his life—how İthaka’ya Yolculuk, while openly fictional, simultaneously upholds the autobiographical claim to truth and fulfills the identity condition between author, narrator, and protagonist postulated by Lejeune’s canonical definition of autobiography. In doing so, the article argues that the novel constitutes a work of autofiction.