Abstract:

In this study, the relationship between life and literature within the historical process was assessed in the context of authenticity and the problem of human existence and human presence in literary texts were discussed. The evolution of artistic activities, which emerged simultaneously with the history of mankind, as a result of the interaction in parallel with the changes in the relations between man and man, man and nature and man and object  was tried to be identified. As a result, it was asserted that a work of art, a literary text in particular adapts very easily to the new situation growing against man in the transition phase, from  God-centred to anthropocentric perception of world where reason is prioritised and man lost his central position. Literature, novel as a litarary genre in particular, the relation with human of which is weakening each day has diverged  from the ordinary reader and it has become addressing to a more elite audience. This situation, which Gasset describes as “dehumanisation of art”, can be seen easily through the protagonists, especially in the novel genre. This process, which can be described as man’s loss of reputation in a sense, is directly related to the sufferings that mankind was doomed by anthropocentric world, and it resulted in fueling the mistrust against his own kind, developed by those sufferings. The rationale of novel’s alienation of  humanitarian values and thus man is the sense of escape from the sufferings and depressions that he was dragged into  by the real world. In a sense, man who alienated himself and his own kind was also alienated by novel as a literary genre.

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