My thesis project is a combination of a comparative analysis of two novels, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita and Orhan Pamuk's Museum of Innocence, and a social-. 1 Irmak Ertuna, "The Mystery of the Object and Anthropological Materialism: Orhan Pamuk's Museum of Innocence and André Breton's Nadja," Journal of Modern Literature 33, no.
Lolita and The Museum of Innocence
Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence
One of the most striking features of the Museum of Innocence is the portrait of Istanbul. 37 Irmak Ertuna, “The Mystery of the Object and Anthropological Materialism: The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk and Nadja André Breton,” 107. In The Museum of Innocence, the names of the two main characters, Kemal and Füsun, have symbolic meanings that are intricately connected to the theme of obsession that he explores the whole novel.
This view emphasizes the novel's narrative structure and the complexity of Humbert's perspective. In the Museum of Innocence, the value of objects is not based on their commodity value. Another important aspect of Füsuna's character is her role in the creation of the Museum of Innocence.
Lacan's objet petit a was a revolutionary approach to the psychoanalytic understanding of obsession, which is central to the analysis of obsessional love in Nabokov's Lolita and Orhan Pamuk's Museum of Innocence. Similarly, Orhan Pamuk's Museum of Innocence can be seen as a manifestation of the Freudian concept of artistic obsession.
Vladmir Nabokov’s Influence on Orhan Pamuk
Obsession in Lolita and The Museum of Innocence
Hulya Yagcioglu also explores the theme of obsession in The Museum of Innocence, but focuses on the novel's critique of patriarchal power structures. Overall, these scholarly works offer different but complementary perspectives on the theme of obsession in The Museum of Innocence.
Protagonists: Nabokov’s Humbert and Pamuk’s Kemal
Additionally, some scholars interpret Humbert as being an unreliable narrator, whose account of the events in the novel cannot be trusted. He is seen as a product of the modern world, which is characterized by moral ambiguity.
Protagonists’ Love Interests: Humbert’s Lolita and Kemal’s Füsun
This illustrates how Kemal views the objects in the museum as a way to possess Füsun's spirit and keep his love alive, reminiscent of the concept of 'objet petit a' in Lacanian psychoanalysis. Applying Yalom's concept of existentialism suggests that Kemal's creation of the museum serves as an existential coping mechanism. From Yalom's perspective, Kemal's creation of the museum represents an existential response to the trauma of loss.
This suggests that the meaning of the objects in the Museum of Innocence can go beyond what the creator intended, as the objects can take on new meanings in the eyes of the spectators. The objects that are exhibited in the museum, the narrator of the novel embodies with an emotional meaning for the protagonist Kemal and narrates each story and explains each. This creates a special connection between museum visitors and the author himself, as if the visitor accompanied Pamuk on his journey to establish a museum of memories.
The first step was to approach a casual visitor to the Museum of Innocence and introduce myself, my study, and the objectives of my research. 34; Creating a Museum of the Past: Reading a Mind at Peace and the Museum of Innocence through Museum and City Concepts." Türk Dili ve Edebiyatı Dergisi 62, no.
Methodology
Theoretical Framework
Psychoanalysis of Obsession
The term "monomania" was first introduced in the 1810s by Jean-Etrienne Esquirol, who was preceded by Philippe Pinel's term "partial madness."93 As Davis explains it,. However, Freud would later challenge this view in the 20th century, arguing that obsessions were actually driven by unconscious desires. In 1856 an essay by a patient in the New York State Lunatic Asylum was published in the American Journal of Insanity, where.
Since then, madness was attributed to the disease of the soul, and at the end of the 19th century obsession began to be defined as a mental illness - hysteria, spleen, neurasthenia, mental breakdown.
Classical Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud
Transference” is another important term coined by Sigmund Freud that furthers the understanding of artistic obsession and unconscious drive. Transference occurs as a response to unresolved past trauma that creates a pattern of psychological or neurotic behavior that is repeated during present experience. He suggests that these repetitive patterns, derived from past negative experiences, can be useful in analyzing the patient's behavior.103 In his essay, "Dynamics of Transference," Freud writes.
104 Sigmund Freud, "The Dynamics of Transference," in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XII The Case of Schreber, Papers on Technique and Other Works, (London: The Hogarth Press.
Structural Psychoanalysis: Jacques Lacan
To objectify the Other, Lacan introduced the term objet petit a, which was meant to embody the unattainable object of desire of a human being. In relation to Lacan's concept of the "Other", the "objet petit a" refers to the desired object of desire that an individual tries to achieve from the Other. The “objet petit a” represents the excess, excess, or void that exists within the Other that the subject seeks to fill or go beyond through its desire.
Mary Jacobus describes the origin story of the term "objet petit a" writing that "In Lacan's seminars of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the developing concept of the petit a object is seen in the mathematics of fantasy as the object of desire. sought in the other.
Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Irvin Yalom
In this way, the Museum of Innocence can be seen as a manifestation of the creative writer's ability to infuse a fantasy world with emotion while at the same time sharply separating it from reality. The artistry of Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence extends beyond the pages of the book and into a physical space, the Museum of Innocence in Istanbul, where visitors can immerse themselves in the world of Kemal and Füsun. Visitors' responses showed that seeing the objects described in the novel in real life added a new dimension to their understanding of the story and characters.
I wrote the novel while thinking about the museum and created the museum while thinking about the novel.
Psychoanalytical Literary Criticism
Lacanian Reading of Lolita and The Museum of Innocence
In Lolita, Dolores Haze becomes Humbert's "objet petit a" because of his unfulfilled desire for his teenage love Annabel Leigh, which can be seen in the parallels he makes when he meets Lolita. In the Museum of Innocence, Kemal's object of desire is Füsun, with whom he has a passionate love affair. Kemal's desire for Füsun is unattainable because she is no longer alive, and his attempts to retrieve her with objects in the museum are ultimately futile.
The objet petit a” embodies the object of obsession that the subject or the possessed could not reach in the past.
Yalom’s Reading of Lolita and The Museum of Innocence
Kemal's desire to create the museum is rooted in his existential search for meaning and purpose in life. Thus the museum serves as a reflection of its own existence and search for meaning. Kemal's creation of the museum can be seen as a way for him to confront his own mortality and create something that will give his life a sense of purpose and meaning beyond his own existence.
Kemal's relationship with Füsun is the driving force behind his desire to create the museum.
The Theory of Agency of Things
One of the pioneers of the study of the art of collecting is Walter Benjamin. Collecting is one of the main themes in Orhan Pamuk's Museum of Innocence, which demonstrates Kemal's obsession with Füsu through a display of objects owned by her that Kemal carefully stole over eight years from the apartment where she lived with her parents. The Museum of Innocence is located in Istanbul, in the Çukurcuma district of the Beyoglu district, which was created to accompany the novel, offering artifacts of the love story of Kemal and Füsun.
The museum would be a three-dimensional embodiment of the novel, where visitors could explore history through objects and spaces that were physically present. The case study of the Museum of Innocence serves as a prime example of how objects can have immense value to individuals and how museums can act as a shrine of obsession for collectors. Object mystery and anthropological materialism: Orhan Pamuk's Museum of Innocence and André Breton's Nadja. Journal of Modern Literature 33, no.
The Anthropology of Museums
Museum as a Shrine of Obsession
I propose the idea that the museum in The Museum of Innocence should be considered a shrine to Kemal's memories of Füsun. In order to analyze the role of the audience in the formation of meanings and the role of the readers who engage in a literary work and provide affective responses resulting from this engagement, I conducted a study in the Museum of Innocence created by Orhan Pamuk as a companion to his novel The Museum of Innocence. It is unlikely that there will be direct benefits for you, but by better understanding the theme of obsession in Orhan Pamuk's Museum of Innocence for researchers and others, it may be able to open new horizons for the interpretation of the novel.
34; Time, Authenticity, and Photographic Narrative in the Museum of Innocence." The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 37, no. 34; The Novel as Museum: Curating Memory in Orhan Pamuk's Museum of Innocence." Criticism: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 54, no.
Readership Experience Method
Survey Method
I conducted the study using descriptive qualitative analysis and before conducting it I obtained approval from the Institutional Research Ethics Committee (IREC). The survey was conducted anonymously, with no sensitive or private information collected. the questionnaire consisted of six questions, which were asked in both English and Turkish to accommodate local people and foreign tourists. If so, why?", "Do you tend to give meaning to objects in your daily life.
If so, why?" The questions were designed to understand visitors' perception of obsessive collecting and its impact on their reading experience, and included questions such as their familiarity with Orhan Pamuk, their opinion of Kemal's collection of Füsuns.
Findings and Description
34;The Carnivalesque and Contemporary Narrative: Popular Culture and the Erotic." University of Ottawa Quarterly 53, no.1: 83-94. 34;"Great Sleepless Artists": Humbert Humbert's Insomnias in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita." Journal of Modern Literature 42, No. 34; Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita: Representation and Reality Reexamining Lolita in Light of Child Sexual Abuse Research." IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science (IOSR-JHSS) 25, no.
A Discourse Analysis in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.” International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature 5, no.
