Abstract:

There have been two debate topics on “Happiness” by Ahmet Mithat Efendi which frequently mentioned in scientific studies in the history of Turkish literature especially relate with the beginning of the village novel. First of these is to which category this work should be included. The second one is “if it could be considered the firs of the village novel” We have focused on firstly without going into details some significance scientific publications which the work ‘Happiness’ had mentioned directly or indirectly. In the second part of the novel we have tried to analyzed the novel in terms of “the story and narrative, point of view, plots, characters, time, place, language and style of the novel”. We have evaluated the fixations about novel in the final section. Although it’s in the village novels which firstly has written the novel ‘Happiness’ has other significance feature which has to be considered. That was actually the first time we have ever seen in this work the adventures of an intellectual type who has enthusiasm and tried to discover abundance of village by emulating life of it. The most distinctive feature of the novel which distinguished it from those has written previously is thanks to that. It would be a recurrence of Felâtun ile Rakım Efendi if would fictionalized on diligence and laziness; fond of European and Turkishstyle concepts. Although there have been same social themed messages in the work ‘Happiness’, the most important feature which distinguish it from the work Felâtun ile Rakım Efendi is the type intellectual Şinasi who has the counterpart of Lord Rakım and desires to stay as a peasant. Here, the rusticity has been shown as source of dignity and happiness. We think it is worth studying with scientific methods and techniques when take into account from this point the novel ‘Happiness’. Our aim in this study is by analyzing mentioned work to contribute to studies which studied by many researcher and draw attention to the different feature of novel from those of have been written in the same content

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