c. 1846 - c. 1913
Ottoman Turkish poet and literary reformer.
Mahmud Ekrem Recaizade was born in Istanbul during the Ottoman Empire and enrolled in the military academy. He later transferred to the Civil Service School where he met and became a disciple of Namik Kemal. He worked for many years as Kemal's assistant on the newspaper Tasvir-i Efkar; in 1867, after Kemal's flight to Paris, Recaizade became chief editor of the newspaper.
Recaizade was a member of the second generation of Tanzimat writers who created the New Literature school, which sought literary inspiration in everyday life. Recaizade also contributed to the Servet-i Fünun (Wealth of sciences) movement, which focused on the problems of the individual under the oppressive regime of Sultan Abdülhamit II. He is considered a transitional figure between the romanticism of Namik Kemal and the realism of Ömer Sayfettin. In addition to his poetry, his novels, and his plays, he published theoretical studies of literature that criticized traditional forms of artistic expression and created an environment for greater artistic experimentation.
Bibliography
Ertop, Konur. "Trends and Characteristics of Modern Turkish Literature." In The Transformation of Turkish Culture: The Atatürk Legacy, edited by Günsel Renda and C. Max Kortepeter. Princeton, NJ: Kingston Press, 1986.
Lewis, Bernard. The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 3d edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Mitler, Louis. Ottoman Turkish Writers: A Bibliographical Dictionary of Significant Figures in Pre-Republican Turkish Literature. New York: P. Lang, 1988.
— DAVID WALDNER
