The Recreation of Beauty as Revealed in the Postmodern Novel Birds Without Wings By Louis De Berniéres
The Recreation of Beauty as Revealed in the Postmodern Novel Birds Without Wings By Louis De Berniéres

Summary/Abstract: From the times immemorial the concept of beauty fascinated philosophers and artists who tried to define it in their works. Even various mythologies and religions reveal this preoccupation with beauty, emphasizing such criteria as proportion, symmetry, virtue, unity, goodness, or such oppositions as harmony vs. chaos, light vs. darkness etc. The attitude toward beauty, as well as the relationship between divinity and beauty changed considerably with the passage of time. The aim of this study is to reveal how the concept of beauty of the Western canon becomes deconstructed and reconstructed in the postmodern novel Birds Without Wings by Louis de Berniéres. The novel, which is set in an Ottoman town at the beginning of the twentieth century, reflects the loss of unity and beauty in an apocalyptic world. Initially presented as a paradisiacal space, Eskibahçe loses its harmony, virtue, and proportion, decaying into chaos.

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