The Republic of Turkey Ankara University Graduate School of Social Sciences Department of Western Languages and Literatures (English Language and Literature)
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THE REPUBLIC OF TURKEY ANKARA UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF WESTERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES (ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE) CONTEXTUALIZING SPACE IN THE CONTEMPORARY SCOTTISH NOVEL: ALASDAIR GRAY’S THE FALL OF KELVIN WALKER, JACKIE KAY’S TRUMPET, AND ALI SMITH’S GIRL MEETS BOY PhD Dissertation Simla KÖTÜZ ÇİFTCİOĞLU Ankara - 2021 THE REPUBLIC OF TURKEY ANKARA UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF WESTERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES (ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE) CONTEXTUALIZING SPACE IN THE CONTEMPORARY SCOTTISH NOVEL: ALASDAIR GRAY’S THE FALL OF KELVIN WALKER, JACKIE KAY’S TRUMPET, AND ALI SMITH’S GIRL MEETS BOY PhD Dissertation Simla KÖTÜZ ÇİFTCİOĞLU Supervisor Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zeynep Zeren ATAYURT FENGE Ankara - 2021 THE REPUBLIC OF TURKEY ANKARA UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF WESTERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES (ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE) CONTEXTUALIZING SPACE IN THE CONTEMPORARY SCOTTISH NOVEL: ALASDAIR GRAY’S THE FALL OF KELVIN WALKER, JACKIE KAY’S TRUMPET, AND ALI SMITH’S GIRL MEETS BOY PhD Dissertation Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zeynep Zeren ATAYURT FENGE Examining Committee Members Name and Surname Signature Prof. Dr. Belgin ELBİR ………………….. Prof. Dr. Nazan TUTAŞ ………………….. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zeynep Zeren ATAYURT FENGE (Supervisor) ………………….. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Müjgan Ayça VURMAY ………………….. Assist. Prof. Dr. Nisa Harika GÜZEL KÖŞKER ………………….. Examination Date: 16.06.2021 TO THE REPUBLIC OF TURKEY ANKARA UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES I hereby declare that in the dissertation “Contextualizing Space in the Contemporary Scottish Novel: Alasdair Gray’s The Fall of Kelvin Walker, Jackie Kay’s Trumpet, and Ali Smith’s Girl meets boy” prepared under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zeynep Zeren ATAYURT FENGE, all information has been obtained and presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. I also declare that, as required by these rules and conduct, I have fully cited and referenced all material and results that are not original to this work. I also acknowledge that if any of these prerequisites are not met in this study, I will bear all legal consequences. (16/06/2021) Simla KÖTÜZ ÇİFTCİOĞLU To my aunt Dr. Nuray Kitapçıoğlu, who has always been my role model… ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my thesis supervisor, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zeynep Zeren Atayurt Fenge, for her academic mentorship and moral support throughout my writing process. She patiently and kindly guided me during the times when I had difficulty and made me feel safe both in academic and emotional terms from the beginning to the end. This study would not have been completed without her continuous encouragement. I am deeply grateful that I had the chance to complete this study under her careful supervision. I also would like to thank the dissertation monitoring committee members, Prof. Dr. Belgin Elbir and Assist. Prof. Dr. Nisa Harika Güzel Köşker, and the dissertation examining committee members, Prof. Dr. Nazan Tutaş and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Müjgan Ayça Vurmay, for their invaluable comments and questions, and constructive criticism. I feel privileged to have had the chance to present this study to such distinguished academics whom I deeply respect and admire. Throughout this journey, I have been surrounded by a net of academic and emotional support. Therefore, I would like to thank Duygu Beste Başer Özcan, Dr. Funda Hay, Assist. Prof. Dr. Gülay Gülpınar Özoran and Assist. Prof. Dr. Sibel İzmir for their support and belief in me. They were always there for me whenever I needed. I feel blessed to have such powerful and supportive women in my life. I am very much indebted to my parents, Güler and Alim Kötüz, and my brother, Yiğit Kötüz for their unconditional love, support and understanding throughout this process. I am aware that they sacrificed a lot, and on every step of this journey, I tried to be sturdy and ‘eident’ like my parents taught me to be. Finally, I want to thank Gökalp Çiftcioğlu for his constant support, understanding, and providing me with a safe and peaceful ‘space’ – our home. I will always be grateful. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………………… 1 CHAPTER I: ‘THE PRODUCTION OF KELVIN’S SPACE’: AN ANALYSIS OF THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE WITHIN THE SCOPE OF LEFEBVRE’S SPATIAL TRIAD IN ALASDAIR GRAY’S THE FALL OF KELVIN WALKER ………………………………………………………………………………………… 18 CHAPTER II: ‘MOODY EDGES’: AN ANALYSIS OF THE RECONCILIATION THEME WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF THE THRESHOLD CHRONOTOPE IN JACKIE KAY’S TRUMPET ……………………………………………………….... 72 CHAPTER III: ‘IMOGEN ALSO MEETS IMOGEN’: THE TRANSFORMATION OF DIALOGICAL SELF IN RELATION TO SPACE AND MOBILITY IN ALI SMITH’S GIRL MEETS BOY……………………………………………………… 138 CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………………... 207 WORKS CITED ……………………………………………………………………. 218 ÖZET ………………………………………………………………………………... 229 ABSTRACT ………………………………………………………………………… 231 INTRODUCTION “walking by the waters, down where an honest river shakes hands with the sea, a woman passed round me in a slow, watchful circle, as if I were a superstition; or the worst dregs of her imagination, so when she finally spoke her words spliced into bars of an old wheel. A segment of air. Where do you come from? ‘Here,’ I said, ‘Here. These parts.’” (Jackie Kay, “In My Country”) The literary critic Robert Tally suggests that “literature … functions as a form of mapping, offering its readers description of places, situating them in a kind of imaginary space, and providing points of reference by which they can orient themselves and understand the world in which they live” (2). In addition to this, “[l]iterature is” also “an essential way in which people in communities convey to themselves and others their concerns and imaginings” (Brown and Riach 1). By taking these two functions of literature into account, it can be stated that the notion of space has provided a fruitful frame throughout the history of literary criticism to explore the ways in which nations and communities represent their culture and ‘identity’ by means of constructing an ‘imaginary national space’ in their literary works. The endeavour to represent the national concerns and identity through literature can be said to be even more meaningful for Scottish culture, since regarded as a “stateless nation” for a long time (Homberg- Schramm 188), literature has always been a means for Scottish culture to construct a solid ground for its national representation, and steer its ‘imagining’ in international spheres. When the Scottish literary history, particularly the history of the Scottish novel, is glanced through, it can be observed that the national concerns of the authors and the essence of Scottish identity are portrayed through multifaceted spatial preferences in the crucial works such as James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner 1 (1824), Sir Walter Scott’s Waverly novels (1829-1833), George Douglas Brown’s The House with The Green Shutters (1901), Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song (1932), Compton Mckenzie’s Whisky Galore (1947), Robin Jenkins’ Cone Gatherers (1955), Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), Alasdair Gray’s Lanark (1981), Iain Banks’ The Bridge (1986), James Robertson’s And The Land Lay Still (2010), and Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus Novels (1987-2020). With regard to the importance attached to the function of space to convey national concerns and to represent the essence of Scottishness in the aforementioned works and in numerous others, Malzahn suggests that particularly the representation of the city can be regarded “as a topos in Scottish literature from the eighteenth century to the present day” (1). Entering into the twenty- first century, other ‘spatial’ themes, such as “movement and mobility” (Homberg- Schramm 162), have started to accompany this topos and they also become recurring themes through which the changing inclinations regarding the national concerns and Scottish identity are communicated. It must be noted that both fields, the contemporary Scottish novel and spatial studies, are dynamic fields with regard to the number of emerging literary works and critical studies, and although there are numerous invaluable studies concerning the different aspects of the relationship between the notions of space and identity, the contemporary Scottish novel still offers a fruitful ground for further scholarly studies to emerge. In line with this, this study aims to contribute to the ongoing discussions about the representation of Scottish identity which is portrayed through multifaceted use of space in the contemporary novel. Therefore, it aims to analyse the employment of various spaces, particularly of London and numerous Scottish cities, and the function of journeys the characters conduct between English and Scottish locations in three contemporary Scottish novels - The Fall of Kelvin Walker (1985) by Alasdair Gray, Trumpet (1998) by 2 Jackie Kay and Girl meets boy (2007)1 by Ali Smith. The dissertation will examine the spatial representations in these novels in the context of sociopolitical treatment, narration and characterization within the framework of the French thinker Henri Lefebvre’s proposal of the spatial triad, the Russian scholar and critic Mikhail Bakhtin’s conceptualisation of the literary chronotope, particularly the chronotope of the threshold, and the Dutch psychologist Hubert Hermans’ theory of the dialogical self. In doing so, this study seeks to explore the ways in which