The author has dwelt, especially in the theoretical part, upon general questions which are side-issues in respect to the theme that he has treated. But this will not seem a digression to those who remember that, strictly speaking, there are no particular philosophical sciences, standing by themselves. Philosophy is unity, and when we treat of Æsthetic or of Logic or of Ethics, we treat always of the whole of philosophy, although illustrating for didactic purposes only one side of that inseparable unity. In like manner, owing to this intimate connexion of all the parts of philosophy, the uncertainty and misunderstanding as to the æsthetic activity, the representative and productive imagination, this firstborn of the spiritual activities, mainstay of the others, generates everywhere else misunderstandings, uncertainties and errors: in Psychology as in Logic, in History as in the Philosophy of Practice. If language is the first spiritual manifestation, and if the æsthetic form is language itself, taken in all its true scientific extension, it is hopeless to try to understand clearly the later and more complicated phases of the life of the spirit, when their first and simplest moment is ill known, mutilated and disfigured. From the explanation of the æsthetic activity is also to be expected the correction of several concepts and the solution of certain philosophic problems which generally seem to be almost desperate. Such is precisely the spirit animating the present work. And if the present attempt and the historical illustrations which accompany it may be of use in winning friends to these studies, by levelling obstacles and indicating paths to be followed; if this happen, especially here in Italy, whose æsthetic traditions (as has been demonstrated in its place) are very noble, the author will consider that he has gained his end, and one of his keenest desires will have been satisfied.

The book in your hands aims to give an opportunity to make a comparison of Western and Eastern literatures in terms of the literary products discussed in this study. The book starts with a brief introduction about comparative studies in the world and in Turkey. Readers will find examples from English, American and Turkish literature. Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party and Said Ertem’s Bacayı İndir Bacayı Kaldır is analysed from Luis Althusser’s perspective. A comparative study of American Ernest Hemingway’s short story, Hills Like White Elephants and Turkish Memduh Şevket Esendal’s Gece Kuşu by means of stylistic method is given. It is also intended to analyse William Butler Yeats on the one hand and on the other hand one of the sultans of the Ottoman Empire, Suleiman the Magnificent by comparing them through the books Her şey ayartabilir beni and Muhıbbî Divanı.

Meditating on the works of contemporary American poets and environmental activists Gary Snyder and W. S. Merwin, Barış Ağır explores the traces of two central cultures, the American Indian and Buddhism, in Snyder’s and Merwin’s poetics. The book culminates in a discussion of these poets’ new mythic sense derived from non-Western origin which ultimately deconstructs the anthropocentric ethics and values of Western culture.

Barış Ağır is an Assistant Professor of English Literature at Osmaniye Korkut Ata University, Turkey.