BILIG, no.73, pp.1-16, 2015 (SSCI)
The concept of historical novel can be said to be an "oxymoron" in itself when thought within the borders of classical rhetoric. The nature of both disciplines, at one hand "history" that is completely real; at the other "novel" that is based on "fiction" reminds this rhetorical figure and seems to create an oxymoron. Nevertheless such a combined term as "historical novel" also makes reference to the fact there are exchanges between domains of history and novel. The presence of the history within the novel and novel within history is such kind of an exhange and it can be seen as a postmodern situation which is realized by the practice of rewriting. Several researchers tried to determine the nature of these exchanges between the history and the novel. It is completely possible to rewrite, in particular within the framework of a novel, the historical events by making several transformations in time, space, character and etc., if we consider the history as a form of specific speech. Indeed, playing whit the historical content in terms of form, semantics and function that are offered by the novel opens the way for a wider fictional space. In contemporary postmodern conditions, it is possible to make a text an object of study. To historicize the text, to transpose the past onto present with certain purpose and certain forms by the practice of rewriting are the processes the postmodern novel uses. In this study, Nedim Gursel's novel which is entitled Bogazkesen will be analyzed in terms of seeing how a postmodern novel uses rewriting as a dominant method of writing and how textually functions in a historical novel.