On Pamuk’s The Black Book As The Parody Of Heroic Epic

Ferit Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish world-renowned literary giant, won the Nobel Prizefor Literature in2006.The Black Book owes its monumental quality at the heart ofPamuk’s oeuvre due to being the central image or literary catalogue from whichPamuk feeds his writing. The innovation of this paper lies on its perspective, whichstudies The Black Book from the parody of epic. The paper structure is as following:The introduction part consists of Orhan Pamuk’s life and works, general idea ofThe Black Book, main features of epics, general knowledge of parody and significanceof the paper.Chapter one studies The Black Book as parody of epic from the perspective ofnarrative theme. In the epic heroes’ journey, their personal value is realized with theaccomplishment of their mission from the nation. The aim and result of modernpeople’s journey, represented by The Black Book, is finding the self-nature.Chapter two studies The Black Book as parody of epic from the perspective ofcharacter. Usually, heroes, described in ancient epics, have a complete journey bothinside and outside, which means while they accomplished the mission for their nation,they also realize their personal value. However, Galip (the hero in The Black Book), arepresentative of people in modern times, is separated from the soul and corporeity,which means Galip himself implies the people in modern times; and columnist Celal,the one whom Galip eagers to become, implies the soul of the people in modern times.Chapter three studies The Black Book as parody of epic from the perspective ofnarrative technique. Bakhtin pointed out that there is an absolute distance separatesthe epic world from contemporary reality. Celal is as parody of epic hero, because henever turns up in front of readers directly, both the readers of Pamuk at the first leveland the readers of columnist Celal at the second level. Readers of the two levels get toknow Celal’s ideas from his column on Milliyet, and Pamuk’s readers track downCelal’s daily life by Galip’s narration. There is an absolute distance between Celal andhis readers. By writing this story as parody of epic, Pamuk presents his readers Turks’smental status under the east-west cultural conflict and expresses his attitude towardsthis situation. He welcomes western ideology and thinks it helps Turks to get to knowtheir own culture better. As a postmodern novel, The Black Book is permeated withsense of anxiety and loss. Meanwhile, it makes its best to contribute itself to theresearch project on the ultimate destination of the human soul. The book’s narrativetechnique is extraordinary, which makes the readers enjoy the beauty of words withcuriosity to the story development.