A Moment of Joy：Essays on Art，Writing and Life

A collection of essays that explores the intricate relationships between literature and art, bringing new insights into famous writers such as Henry James and Virginia Woolfe.

This book is for readers who are interested in literature, visual arts and writings about life. Most of the time, life itself, including personal ones and collective ones (such as nation, natural environment and so forth), gives incredible inspirations to the one who is writing. And yet, through more reading and more thinking, the writing self can imagine someone else's way of living, as if he or she is living through it. This collection of essays brings literature and visual arts together, as their aesthetics come to complete each other.
Preface by the author

The idea of having a collection of essays published is quite a recent one. Right after I joined Education Faculty, about one year ago, it came to my mind. In Turkey, the study of literature is actually quite a problematic one. Students in departments which are related to literary studies (in Faculty of Letters or Faculty of Letters and Sciences) mostly worry about their futures, since the system itself will represent a bit of challenge for them to become language teachers. Any studies related to literature, in general, is not for enjoyment or or fun. The study itself, indeed, expresses a general anxiety of facing a future of uncertainty.
Under such a different, and yet challenging academic environment, it is really difficult to teach literature, especially literature in English. Students are used to be passive. Creative thinkings and links (for example, literature and critical theory, literature and visual arts) are not so much expected as in other countries. Too much links and creative works would be seen as unclear and as something unnecessary.
Teaching and doing research are truly quite different things. In research, I am able to care more about what I can achieve, instead of thinking about what can students achieve in the cl

Acknowledgements Preface Chapter 1 Through the Gaze: History, Literature and Arts Chapter 2 Jane Eyre: Arts in the Novel of Charlotte Brontë Chapter 3 Teaching English and Cultural Exchange in Gaziantep Chapter 4 Roger Fry, Istanbul, and the Art of Seeing Chapter 5 The Dialectical Relation: Landscape and History in The Last of the Mohicans and The Course of Empire Chapter 6 Self, Art, Fiction: The Portrait of a Lady Chapter 7 London and Crisis in Henry James’s The Awkward Age Chapter 8 The Flâneur’s Gaze and the Dialectical Representation of London: Using Woolf’s “Street Haunting” as an Example