Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Dilbilim (Tahsin Yücel'e Armağan), cilt.2, sa.30, ss.63-74, 2016 (Hakemli Dergi)
Chatterton, a novel published in 1987 by the British writer Peter Ackroyd, explores the ontological features of a work of art via various characters looking for their personal histories or histories of various, objects or phenomena. The text shows these characters fail in their goals; the history looked for or spoken of cannot be learnt or constructed. Thus, in a postmodern perspective, the search and construction constitute a self reference. Chatterton, eventually, exalts the existence of history and the artwork in respect of the creator, who puts these forth, and of the audience, who is intellectually related to these. The novel concentrates on postmodern issues like construction, meaning, reality, relativity, the power and limitation of the word, artifice, fragmentalion ancl merging in timelessness. The narrative focuses on the artwork and the conception of reality as construction, highlights their fictionality, and displays them as peculiar systems. It seems to differ from the liberal humanist tradition with a basis of definable, established external reality and values. Yet, the text also spontaneously reacts against the postmodern attitude diagnosing relativity and meaninglessness. Hence, alongside with a postmodern stance and discourse including or acknowledging the existent and the existence, it approves of and exults over the exploration of meaning and definition in context of history and the artwork.