Descriptions and Analyses in M. N. Sepetçioğlu’s Novel, Bir Ömür Boyu Kıbrıs / Boyun Eğiş

Abstract

Mustafa Necati Sepetçioğlu is a versatile author who wrote over forty novels and a dozen plays, some of which are unpublished. Although known as a historical novelist, many of his novels do not meet the requirements of this sub-genre; at best he can be classified as a national, romantic historical novelist. For him art is only an instrument for portraying or conveying the national and local culture. Therefore his novels do not fulfill the expectations of an intellectual reader in the artistic sense. Instead of making us feel the historical mileu/medium, Sepetçioğlu presents us the rough, the so-called immediate historical material as it is, as the result of which the artistic element is largely lost.

One can say that he is not keen at using the language, either. He has created a language of his own, but a language hard to read and hardly literary. He easily sacrifices the form to the content. In the openning of Bir Ömür Boyu Kıbrıs / Boyun Eğiş, he underlines his view of art and artist which is very likely to surprise many readers.

He also fails in making descriptions and psychological analysis in his novel. His descriptions do not add much to the dramatic effect of his novels nor do his psychological analyses. Rather shallow and quite amateurisly, it so sounds that they are there as an artistic formality and to increase the bulk of the novels