Adapting Shahrazad’s Odyssey: The Female Wanderer and Storyteller in Victorian and Contemporary Middle Eastern Literature Eda Dedebas Dundar, PhD University of Connecticut, 2013 This project traces connections between the concepts of travel and rewriting in women’s fiction in nineteenth-century Victorian literature and in Anglophone Middle Eastern writing. This study is the first to discover a strong link between travelling texts and the travelling women in fiction and to analyze the ways in which the travelling woman is molded by her previous exposure to stories. In this comparative project, I argue that travel can be understood as a metaphor for rewriting and the female wanderer as the reworked adaptation of Odysseus and Shahrazad figures and that the concept of adaptation can be read as a metatextual travel between past and present, Victorian and contemporary, nostalgia and progress. Moreover, I explore the ways in which rewriting empowers women writers who are traditionally considered outside of both the male canon and the travel experience in general. The first part focuses on two Victorian women writers, Olive Schreiner and Christina G. Rossetti, and their feminist responses to the Victorian admiration for ancient Greek culture. The figure of the fictional voyager within the Victorian tradition of masculine, colonial adventure stories merges with the protagonist of the female novel of development in The Story of an African Farm (1883) and Speaking Likenesses (1874). As Schreiner’s novel re-visions the Victorian female Bildungsroman, Rossetti’s narrative stands out as a multi-faceted text by poking fun at traveling women, female development, and the Homeric tradition imitated in the nineteenth century. The second part of my project discusses two Anglophone Middle Eastern writers, Ahdaf Soueif and Güneli Gün, who fuse the Western tradition of the Homeric epic with the story-telling tradition of One Thousand and One Nights. As Ahdaf Soueif’s Neo-Victorian The Map of Love (1999) embodies the idea that the concepts of writing and travel occur not only in a spatial and a cultural dimension but also in a temporal dimension, Güneli Gün’s On the Road to Baghdad (1991) contributes to the motifs of travelling and rewriting through its adolescent protagonist who befriends Shahrazad and takes the lyre from Homer on her spatial, temporal, metatextual, and spiritual expedition to Baghdad. Eda Dedebas Dundar – University of Connecticut, 2013 Adapting Shahrazad’s Odyssey: The Female Wanderer and Storyteller in Victorian and Contemporary Middle Eastern Literature Eda Dedebas Dundar B.A., Bogazici University, 2004 M.A., Bogazici University, 2007 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut 2013 Copyright by Eda Dedebas Dundar 2013 APPROVAL PAGE Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation Adapting Shahrazad’s Odyssey: The Female Wanderer and Storyteller in Victorian and Contemporary Middle Eastern Literature Presented by Eda Dedebas Dundar, B.A., M.A. Major Advisor ______________________________________________________ Margaret R. Higonnet Associate Advisor ______________________________________________________ Kerry Bystrom Associate Advisor ______________________________________________________ Jacqueline Loss Associate Advisor ______________________________________________________ Lisa M. Sanchez-Gonzalez University of Connecticut 2013 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the guidance and the help of several individuals who contributed and extended their valuable assistance in the preparation and completion of this study. First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor Dr. Margaret R. Higonnet for her continuous support of my Ph.D. study and research, for her patience, motivation, enthusiasm, and immense knowledge. It was a privilege to work with an advisor who supported me at my every step in this study and enlightened me with her questions and comments in our discussions. It was a great pleasure to work with a mentor who is as enthusiastic as her student and who devoted her time to give me valuable feedback. Her guidance, not only in this study but also in my entire graduate study, has helped me all the way since Fall 2007. I am so glad to have taken Dr. Higonnet’s graduate seminar in Victorian Literature in my first semester at the University of Connecticut and so honored that she agreed to have me as her student. I am also grateful to her for opening new horizons and for providing many other academic opportunities throughout my graduate study. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to one of my associate advisors, Dr. Kerry Bystrom, who has become my mentor, professor, advisor, role model during my Ph.D. study. Without her two graduate seminars on Human Rights and Literature and her enthusiasm in her field, I would not have imagined taking an interest in the field of human rights. She deserves even more kudos for continuing to be on my committee when she was no longer living in the U.S. Her enthusiasm as a scholar and her accessibility and motivation as a teacher will be guiding forces in my future academic career as well. I am also indebted to my two associate advisors, Dr. Jacqueline Loss and Dr. Lisa Sanchez-Gonzalez for agreeing to be part of this project and for their encouragement, insightful comments, and support during my job search. I am also grateful to Dr. Eduardo Urios-Aparisi for agreeing to be my external reader, his valuable feedback and questionings, and his support throughout my Ph.D. study. Last but not least, I would like to thank Dr. Norma Bouchard for all her support and encouragement during my graduate study at the University of Connecticut. Without her motivation, critique, guidance, and probing questions, I would not be where I am. Though I am no longer officially affiliated with Bogazici University, there are three important people to whom I am indebted. I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Cevza Sevgen, Dr. Deniz Tarba Ceylan, and Dr. Asli Tekinay for being great role models, for motivating me all through my seven years at Bogazici University, and for supporting me during my Ph.D. study at the University of Connecticut. My special thanks go to my friends Lucia G. Santana, Evra Gunhan, Alejandro Mylonas Leegstra and Elcin Egercioglu Konuk whose support and enthusiasm made me continue. Without our coffee breaks at Bookworms with Lucia, I would not have finished this project. She was the one who extracted me from my carrell and revived me with a cup of coffee and her lively chat when I had no energy or motivation. Evra Gunhan, has become a true friend and a lifelong supporter during my Ph.D. study in Storrs, CT. She closely witnessed my anxiety and stress during my first and last semesters at UConn. I am so fortunate to have her as one of my best friends. Needless to say, my most sincere and deepest thanks must go to my parents Asuman Dedebas and Osman Dedebas and to my sister Alev Arslan, who believed in me and supported my enthusiasm for literature when I unconsciously insisted on studying language and literature as a sixteen-year-old adolescent. In particular, my parents spent hours at the Istanbul Ataturk Airport eagerly awaiting my homecoming and seeing me off with their moist eyes. Without their lifelong and invaluable encouragement, I would not have accomplished what I have done so far. Sevgili annem Asuman Dedebas’a ve babam Osman Dedebas’a yasamim boyunca bana ve akademik calismalarima verdikleri tum destek icin cok tesekkur ederim. Bu doktora derecesini almama katkida bulunan seylerden biri de onlarin alti yildir suren sabirlaridir. Onlarin yasamim boyunca suren destegi olmasa buralara gelemezdim. As a young scholar interested in traveling and writing, I guess I had to travel all the way across the Atlantic – from Istanbul, Turkey to Storrs, CT - to find the best travel companion in the world. I am so fortunate to have met my best friend, my soul mate, my other half and my husband, Baha Guclu Dundar, on August 14, 2007, my first day at the University of Connecticut and in the U.S. This particular date tremendously changed my life. Without his immense support, encouragement, belief, and motivation, I would have gone back to Turkey without finishing this degree. He is the one who magically turned this “temporary travel” into a life-long journey. As we are expecting our first child, we hope that he shares our wanderlust, enjoys traveling like us, and becomes a perfect travel companion to our journey in life. Last but not least, I would like to thank my dear son-to-be for his patience and understanding during the most stressful times of this dissertation. His immense patience during my job interviews, those demanding days and all-nighters, and my defense will always be appreciated. I have just started feeling his first kicks. As I am about to finish the final version of this dissertation, I think, with those kicks, he is also reminding me of his presence and kindly asking me to mention his contribution in my acknowledgements. Table of Contents I. Introduction ……...………………………………………………………………………..1 II. Part I Victorian Odysseys ……..………………….…………………………………….24 a. Chapter 1 Olive Schreiner..……………………….……………………………...31 b. Chapter 2 Christina Rossetti…...………………………………………………...63 III. Part II Anglophone Middle Eastern Women Writers……………………………………98 a. Chapter 3Ahdaf Soueif…...…………………………………………………….104 b. Chapter 4 Güneli Gün ….………………...…………………………………….135 IV. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...169 V. Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………….173 Dedebas Dundar 1 INTRODUCTION The concept of travel, usually considered a male prerogative, signals a sustained movement. It breaches boundaries, makes connections between different settings, time periods, and cultures. Bridging the gap between various places and people, the journey metaphor posits a sense of liminality as it focuses on at least two spaces: home and the new destination. Moreover, the metaphor of travel paves the way for the rewriting of social order by providing a fresh perspective different from the social conventions at home.