Invoking the Sacred in a Secular Age: Modernist Appeals to the Divine in T. S. Eliot and İsmet Özel

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article reads like the abstract of a very interesting comparative study between an American, Eliot, and a Turkish poet, Özil, around the issue of modernism, secularism and post-colonialism. As it is the article feels too short and its structure predictable: introduction, analysis of a poem by each, comparison and conclusion.

There is much that is taken for granted. For instance, what kind of a modernist is Özil writing well-past the movement's prime? It would be worth spending a little time establishing what "modernism" might mean for each, indeed, how it differed. 

The article needs to further tease out a more nuanced comparison between Eliot and Ozel. The article's objective is that “together they show that religious modernist poetics can be simultaneously modernist and devout”, yes, but does “modernist” mean exactly the same thing for and American in Europe than for a Turk under Western influence in his own country? I think it is here where the gold lies. 

If Ozil was trying to neutralise Western cultural ascendancy in favour of his own Islamism, then the effort was different to Eliot’s in quite fundamental ways. How exactly is Ozil able to use modernist technique against the very forces that had instituted it from Western Europe and the USA? Does not that fact fundamentally belie Özil's insurgency?

The author refers to this issue by the end of the article but leaves it hanging (line 346ff). I think this could be turned into the backbone of new extended version of this article. It would benefit from a more overt allusions to post-colonial approaches to Modernism in ways that also involves Eliot as an American in England choosing to forgo his American Unitarianism and convert to the local form of Christianity – not Catholicism but High Church Anglicanism (Anglo-Catholicism).

The article is well-written, at times elegantly, but it needs to thoroughly revise its references -- footnotes are misplaced throughout. Also, I feel the article relies too heavily on the work of Barry Spurr and Michelangelo Guida about Eliot and Özil respectively.

 

Author Response

We sincerely thank the reviewer for their thoughtful and stimulating critique. We appreciate their close engagement with the conceptual core of our study and their encouragement to deepen the comparative and theoretical discussion. We have carefully revised the manuscript in light of their comments, as detailed below.

We agree that the term modernism required further contextualization, particularly given that İsmet Özel’s poetry emerges after the historical peak of Euro-American modernism. Accordingly, we have added a paragraph in Section 2 (“Background: Religious Modernist Poetics”) clarifying that Turkish modernism developed as a translated and belated formation shaped by mid-twentieth-century literary journals and modernization projects. Drawing on Barış Büyükokutan (2018), we note that this “reflective or second-wave modernism” functioned as both imitation and contestation of Western models. This addition situates Özel’s aesthetic practice within a specifically Turkish temporal and cultural frame rather than assuming a universal modernism.

We have substantially refined Section 5 (“Comparison”) to clarify that modernism does not carry the same meaning for each poet. A new opening paragraph explains that Eliot’s modernism emerges from early-twentieth-century Western humanist crisis, while Özel’s arises within a post-1960s context marked by secular nationalism and ideological contest. We explicitly define modernist here not as a fixed style but as “a set of adaptive formal strategies responsive to distinct modernities.” This directly addresses the reviewer’s request for a more nuanced comparative definition.

We are deeply grateful for the reviewer’s incisive question about how İsmet Özel—and, by extension, other Islamist poets—could employ modernist techniques that originated in Western secular contexts. This observation prompted us to develop a new endnote (added in the final version, Section 5) that directly addresses this paradox.

In the revised text, we situate Özel within the İkinci Yeni (“Second New”) movement of 1950s–60s Turkish poetry, which introduced a distinctly modernist idiom—free verse, disjunction, and surreal imagery—that later influenced religiously oriented poets such as Sezai Karakoç and Cahit Zarifoğlu. We show that these writers strategically appropriated avant-garde forms not as imitation but as acts of cultural renewal, transforming modernist experimentation into a vehicle of re-sacralization.

To contextualize this dynamic, we draw on Besim Dellaloğlu’s Modernleşmenin Zihniyet Dünyası: Bir Tanpınar Fetişizmi (2016), who defines Turkish modernism itself as a rebellion within modernity—what he calls the “enfant terrible” of the modern world. Following Dellaloğlu, we argue that the Islamist poets’ adoption of modernist techniques is not contradictory but emblematic of Turkey’s broader cultural dialectic: modernism in Turkey has always been both inheritance and resistance. This conceptual clarification directly answers the reviewer’s concern by showing that Özel’s insurgent use of modernist form arises naturally from the paradoxical conditions of Turkish modernity.

In response to the reviewer’s valuable suggestion, we have incorporated a clear postcolonial dimension into the conclusion. The revised text now emphasizes how the contrast between Eliot’s Anglo-Catholicism and Özel’s Islamism reflects not only theological difference but also divergent cultural positions within global modernity. We explicitly frame Eliot as a poet writing from the imperial center—an American adopting the spiritual authority of British High Church tradition—and Özel as a poet writing from the periphery, whose Islamic poetics contests the legacy of Westernization in Turkey. This addition articulates that their divergent religious modernisms are inseparable from the geopolitical asymmetries of the twentieth century. In doing so, the conclusion now situates the comparative study within postcolonial and global modernist debates, showing how both poets negotiate modernity’s spiritual crisis from opposite ends of the colonial divide.

In revising the manuscript, we carefully rechecked all references for accuracy, consistency, and completeness—ensuring that each citation corresponds to a source listed in the reference section and that all entries include proper publication details and DOIs. We also expanded the bibliography to include additional critical perspectives on both Eliot and Özel, thereby broadening the scholarly base of the study. At the same time, we have retained and foregrounded Michelangelo Guida’s (2014) article, as it remains the most comprehensive and authoritative study of İsmet Özel available in English. For international readers unfamiliar with Turkish literary scholarship, Guida’s work provides indispensable context for understanding Özel’s intellectual and poetic transformation. Likewise, Barry Spurr’s “Anglo-Catholic in Religion”: T. S. Eliot and Christianity (2010) continues to serve as the definitive source on Eliot’s religious modernism; his meticulous analysis of Eliot’s Anglo-Catholic commitments remains crucial for framing the poem Ash-Wednesday within its theological and cultural dimensions. Retaining these two foundational studies thus ensures the paper’s accessibility and scholarly rigor for an international readership.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a thoroughly excellent essay and I recommend publication without any revision.  It's an intriguing idea to compare Eliot's "Ash Wednesday" with Ozel's "Amentu."  Although I was not previously familiar with Ozel's work, the essay does an fine job of locating his work within the ideological spectrum of 1970s Turkey.  The reading of these works draws instructive parallels (they both describe religious conversions) and also notes significant divergences (the top-down character of Turkey's secularization compared with the bottom-up nature of the same process in the West).  In each case the poet blends religious with modernist techniques to construct an aesthetic that functions in a quasi-spiritual manner appropriate to modernity.  I'd have been interested to learn more about the author's thoughts on the literary and political future of Turkey in particular--in many ways Ozel was a precursor of his nation's social changes, while Eliot was moving against the popular tide.  However that isn't a suggested revision: the essay is fine just as it is.

Author Response

We sincerely thank you for your generous and encouraging evaluation. We are grateful for your affirmation that the essay provides a compelling and balanced comparison between T. S. Eliot’s “Ash-Wednesday” and İsmet Özel’s “Amentü,” and for your recognition of how the article situates Özel within the ideological and literary spectrum of 1970s Turkey.

We appreciate your thoughtful observation that the study illuminates both shared spiritual trajectories and divergent cultural contexts—specifically, the contrast between Turkey’s top-down secularization and the more diffuse, bottom-up secularization in the Western world.

You also expressed interest in the potential literary and political futures that Özel’s example may foreshadow. We deeply value this insight and view it as an invitation to continued dialogue rather than a revision request. We would be delighted to engage further in communication and debate with you after publication, particularly on how the trajectory of Turkish literature and politics might evolve in light of the religious modernist poetics explored here.

We are grateful for your wholly positive assessment and recommendation for publication, which we took as strong encouragement to preserve the clarity and focus of the original structure while making minor conceptual refinements elsewhere.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is an interesting, original, and engaging paper that takes up literary theory, cultural theory, and the study of religion together, and does a great job of it.

Author Response

We sincerely thank you for their positive and encouraging assessment. We greatly appreciate their recognition of the article’s originality and its integration of literary theory, cultural theory, and the study of religion.

Your affirmation that the paper “does a great job” combining these approaches was deeply gratifying. Your supportive evaluation reinforced our confidence in the comparative framework and theoretical balance of the study. We made no structural changes in response, as no revisions were requested, but we are encouraged that the interdisciplinary dialogue the paper fosters resonates with readers across these fields.

We thank you again for their kind endorsement and for recognizing the contribution this work aims to make to ongoing discussions at the intersection of religion and modernist poetics.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I think the changes are insufficient as they appear on the latest version of your article. You need to rethink it structurally. In the light of my comments on your first version, it is not enough to add a few sporadic paragraphs, but to reorganise your approach so that the comparison between Eliot and Özel is more dynamic and more clearly motivated. There is a good article here, but you need to put the time and the work.

Author Response

We sincerely thank the reviewer for their thoughtful and stimulating feedback. We agree that their comments have been instrumental in helping us transform this article into a much more complete and conceptually robust study.

We worked ceaselessly to implement the necessary revisions, despite a tight schedule, and have undertaken substantial improvements at both the structural and theoretical levels. In response to the reviewer’s suggestions:

Structural Revisions and Expansion
We have restructured the paper to create a more dynamic and motivated comparison between Eliot and Özel. Two entirely new sections have been added:

Section 6: “Different Modernities”, which situates the two poets within distinct yet interrelated cultural and historical experiences of modernity.

Section 7: “Different Literary Modernisms”, which expands the argument into the broader field of Turkish literary modernism.
In addition, both the Conclusion and Abstract have been rewritten to synthesize these new insights and articulate the article’s comparative motivation more clearly.

Integration of Postcolonial Framework
Following the reviewer’s recommendation, we have explicitly incorporated postcolonial and world-systems perspectives (Wallerstein) to theorize the asymmetry between Western and Turkish modernisms. This framework now serves as one of the conceptual backbones of the article.

Balance Between Reviewers’ Expectations
While we did not alter the original sections in which other reviewers had already expressed satisfaction, we have significantly expanded the overall scope of the article by building upon those foundations. This approach allowed us to respect the earlier feedback while addressing the present reviewer’s call for greater structural and theoretical depth.

Significant Expansion of References and Conceptual Depth
The bibliography has been substantially enlarged and diversified. We have engaged a wide range of contemporary scholarship in comparative literature, sociology of secularization, and Turkish modernism. These additions are not mere mentions but integral to the article’s conceptual argument.

We are deeply grateful to the reviewer for challenging us to strengthen our theoretical framework and comparative design. We believe the revised article now presents a more comprehensive and dynamic engagement with the intertwined questions of modernism, secularization, and religious poetics across cultural contexts.

With appreciation...