Distancing Gender in Contemporary Hungarian Fiction

Pál Hegyi

doi:10.5195/ahea.2019.363

Abstract

Representations of gender crossing go back to a rich tradition in Hungarian literature. The most conspicuous achievements for performing gender passing on the authorial plane are epitomized in such fictionalized female literary alter egos as Erzsébet Lónyay (Sándor Weöres), Lili Csokonai (Péter Esterházy), and Jolán Sárbogárdi (Lajos Parti Nagy). Providing a unique sensibility to seek out innovative forms that could accommodate interrogations into distancing gender, it is a legacy that finds continuation in the works of a new generation of young Hungarian prose writers. By conducting close-readings of literary pieces by two present-day writers, Pál Hegyi’s paper endeavors to give instances of how gender passing is transposed from the authorial plane to the level of narratives. The short stories “Karambol” [‘Crash’] by Ádám Berta and “Pertu” [‘On Intimate Terms’] by Edina Szvoren will be interpreted to adumbrate distancing narrative strategies for crossing gender boundaries.

Highlights

Representations of gender crossing go back to a rich tradition in Hungarian literature
Her book centers on a distinction between the biographical author and the implied reader when describing the aesthetic potential in gendered identity games
The term is deployed in this investigation to delineate an observable shift from modernist, postmodernist tendencies to play out cross-gendering on the authorial plane towards present-day literary efforts to relegate such identity games to the level of narratives

Summary

Introduction

Representations of gender crossing go back to a rich tradition in Hungarian literature. The term is deployed in this investigation to delineate an observable shift from modernist, postmodernist tendencies to play out cross-gendering on the authorial plane towards present-day literary efforts to relegate such identity games to the level of narratives.

Results

Conclusion