Hungarian Prose Research Articles

Language and National Identity Acquired through Culture

The “language” career of Ferenc Herczeg in a nutshell is: how the German speaking boy from the Banat Swabian region (today in Romania) became the Hungarian playwright who put Hungarian drama on the path to European success. He was a committed writer of national endeavors and the creator of successful Hungarian prose and dramatic oeuvre. The subject of the research is to explain how Ferenc Herczeg’s “language program” became so successful since: “There was no other foreign speaker who learned Hungarian as well as Ferenc Herczeg” (Hegedűs). Examining the language path, research may explain the adaptation considered to be the key to success and the contribution of the author’s bilingualism to the foundation of success. In the case of Herczeg, social, cultural, and linguistic assimilation was so successful that it gave rise to countless speculations. The majority of the criticism seeks the social adaptation and reflects less on linguistic assimilation. The item to prove is that Herczeg, a German speaking boy of Swabian decent, became Hungarian because of literature-centric Hungarian culture.

The representation of the 1989 regime change in contemporary Hungarian prose texts

AbstractA fundamental segment of contemporary Hungarian prose literature has attempted to represent and textually portray the change in political regimes which took place in 1989. The dictatorship, the totalitarian system and the subsequent transition period proved to be excellent raw material; resulting in a very different kind of prose which, when compared to previous representations of Transylvania, elicits attention on the one hand by being distinctly separate from the assumption of an ideological role, and on the other hand by creating the given linguistic and fictional space through continuous transition(s), (inter-ethnic) in-betweenness and the relevance of otherness.

Közelítés és távolodás

In this paper I seek common ground between the memoirs of Péter Nádas, a prominent figure in contemporary Hungarian literature, and certain writings of Miklós Mészöly, an important author of twentieth-century Hungarian prose. I show that both authors disrupt the classical chronology of narrative. The temporal structure of Nádas’s memoir is determined by the attempt to identify the narrator’s first memory, whereas in Mészöly’s works the present tense is valorised and the narrative’s final goal is rejected. In their depiction of war, they can be seen as complementary works. Mészöly writes from the point of view of a soldier who has been to the front, while N.das writes from the point of view of a civilian. In this parallel reading, both the soldier and the civilian appear as victims of war.

The Motif of the Girl’s Growing Up Journey in Russian and Hungarian Prose of the Middle of the Twentieth Century

The Motif of the Girl’s Growing Up Journey in Russian and Hungarian Prose of the Middle of the Twentieth Century

A név mint paratextus a műfordítás gyakorlatában

The study examines issues related to translating an author’s name and character names when these are considered paratexts. The introduction briefly describes the interdisciplinary context of study into paratextuality, pointing to the research areas emerging at the intersection of literary theory, translation studies, and onomastics. The paper then analyzes the translation methods used in the case of authors’ names, pseudonyms, title characters, and intertextual names in separate sections, focusing on publications of popular literature and 20th-century Hungarian prose, especially Zsigmond Móricz, Dezső Kosztolányi and Jenő Rejtő in foreign languages. Following the criteria described in the literature review, the study examines verbal paratexts and the visual paratexts of the covers (typography, cover image).

Literary Parallels: Anton Chekhov and Mór Jókai

The article as a whole describes the work of the Hungarian prose writer Mór Jókai, the topics and problemanics of his works. But the author’s attention is focused on the “Russian text” in the novels of Mór Jókai, compared with the “Hungarian text” in the works of Anton Chekhov in the 1880s.

Transcultural phenomena in contemporary Slovakian Hungarian prose

AbstractIn my study I deal with the transcultural liteary-spacial position of contemporary Slovakian Hungarian prose. I have selected the works for interpretation from the representative writings of the last five years (Katarina Durica: Szlovákul szeretni [To love in Slovak]. Libri, Budapest, 2016; Anikó N. Tóth: Szabad ez a hely? [Is this seat free?]. Pesti Kallgiram Kft., Budapest, 2017; Pál Száz: Fűje sarjad mezőknek [Grass grows on meadows]. Pesti Kalligram Kft., Budapest, 2017). Due to their diversity in genre, language and subject, these works provide a cross-section of contemporary Slovakian Hungarian prose. The peculiarity of the corpus is that it reflects on the hibridity, inter- and multiculturalism typical for Central-European literature (cf. Welsch, 1999), and it also demonstrates translocality, multiculturalism, multilingualism and the experience of using multiple language varieties.

Slovakian Hungarian prose in Slovakia after the change of regime in 1989

AbstractThe present study showcases the achievements of Slovakian Hungarian prose in the past three decades. It shows the changes in the literary institutional system brought about by the change of regime in 1989. It devotes detailed attention to the careers of Lajos Grendel and Alfonz Talamon; furthermore, it highlights some characteristic poetics and uses of language which resulted in intriguing works by Gábor Farnbauer, Attila Győry, Daniel Levicky Archleb, Zsófia Bárczi, József Gazdag, Norbert György, and Péter Hunčík. It also touches upon the experiments of the younger generation of prose writers such as Zoltán Szalay and Pál Száz.

A MINDENNAPI ÉLET KRITIKÁJA

Bori Imre a hatvanas évek közepén a szociográfiában a magyar próza reneszánszának lehetőségét látta. Ez a reneszánsz akkor nem érkezett el, ám a szociografikus ihletésű művek vagy a szociográfiák a hetvenes évektől erőteljes hatást gyakoroltak az irodalomra, és jellemzően ellenzéki műfajként a politikára is. Napjainkban ismét azt figyelhetjük meg, hogy egyre több olyan irodalmi mű születik, melyek kapcsán a kritikusok (új)realizmusról beszélnek. Több kérdés is felvetődik ezzel kapcsolatban. Egyrészt az, hogy minek köszönhető ez az új hullám, milyen esztétikai minőséget jelent, és – Borihoz kapcsolódva – az, hogy a szociográfiai elemek erőteljes jelenléte a kortárs irodalomban vajon most elhozza-e a próza reneszánszát. A tanulmány ezeknek a problémáknak a végiggondolására vállalkozik.

Péter Pázmány: Cardinal, Archbishop of Esztergom, Primate of Hungary

Péter Pázmány (1570–1636) was one of the most significant personalities in early modern Hungarian history. Born a Protestant, Pázmány converted to Catholicism while a student and then became a Jesuit. Despite the Society’s requirement of vows from its members that excluded the possibility of holding high ecclesiastical office, Pázmány became provost of Turóc (a small church benefice in northern Hungary) and shortly thereafter archbishop of Esztergom and primate of Hungary. His tenure was marked by ecclesiastical reform and multiple educational projects of which the most notable was the founding of a university in Nagyszombat (Trnava). He was also the author of influential devotional and polemical works in the Hungarian vernacular. Pázmány’s legacy as a preserver and promoter of a “civilization” and a creed both Christian and European and of a culture distinctly Hungarian endures, as does his reputation as a master and shaper of Hungarian prose.

Rise of New Hungarian Prose: Narrative Strategies of Literary Emancipation in Péter Esterházy’s Production Novel

This article explores key narrative features of Péter Esterházy’s Production Novel (1979), a landmark of the “new” Hungarian prose of the 1970s–1980s. The article provides a brief overview of the novel and successively addresses the strategies of ironic re-interpretation of the production novel genre, observed both in Hungarian and Soviet works at the forefront of the Hungarian literary landscape in the 1950s. The analysis deals with the two-part composition of the novel that entangles the main story line with fictional comments, constituting a meta-narrative layer and guiding the perception of the novel and the reader’s possible interpretations; the complex structure of the narration and the whole system of formal techniques used for permeating the boundaries of different narrators’ voices within the text, which produces the effect of a distributed narrative (spatial, temporal, psychological, and axiological) focus. The author demonstrates that all these narrative techniques and devices are part of a premeditated strategy of literary emancipation dominating the “new” Hungarian prose of the 1970s–1980s, which can be considered, both aesthetically and historically, a stage of emerging postmodernism in the Hungarian literature of the time. The analysis leads to conclude that the emancipatory impulse of the Production Novel manifests itself not only in a set of narrative techniques but, through them, in the violation of basic pragmatic conventions of novelistic narration and undermining the settings of realist literature. The novel makes the reader reconsider the whole structure of the traditional narrative and further on, the ethical parameters governing the new literary communication.

Distancing Gender in Contemporary Hungarian Fiction

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.

Dictatorship, Infantilisation, and The Focalization Of A Child: Zsuzsa Rakovszky’sA Hullócsillag Éve(The Year Of The Falling Star) And Ferenc Barnás’ Kilencedik (The Ninth)

In my paper, I call attention to a literary trend of contemporary Hungarian prose fiction, in which the communist past is narrated from a child’s point of view. I will concentrate on the relation among the focalization of the narrative through the eyes of a child, the theme of dictatorship, and present-tense narration. I will relate my approach to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s ideas on the problem of representing disempowered people, in other words, representing the subaltern. I take the narration of a child situated in a fictional dictatorial time as a special case of giving voice to the subaltern. In the first part of my paper I will address the theoretical and narratological problem of giving voice and understanding the subordinated figures. The second part consists of the analysis of the novels by Zsuzsa Rakovszky and Ferenc Barnás. I will argue that the communist past is a counterfeit referent since it is narrated by an unreliable child narrator. The object of representation is not the historical past but it is itself the perspective of the child through which we come to understand a hidden pattern of dictatorship: infantilization.

Naming strategies in the ‘one minute short stories’ of István Örkény

This paper reviews the different strategies of using names in the ‘One minute short stories’ of István Örkény, a contemporary innovator of Hungarian prose writing. The main purpose of the case study is to highlight the fact that the use, unuse and abuse of naming in extremely short texts where naming is hardly used for keeping track of the referential chain can become a powerful carrier of the author's meaning. Specifically, naming strategies become means to convey the message that personal identity and authenticity become qustionable in modern life. Some basic strategies identified in the corpus were the following ones: under- and overcharacterization as two devices to convey depersonalization; opposition between oppressor expressed as the opposition between named and unnamed; obtaining a name as the climax of a story; and naming non-human entities as an indicator of the relativity of humanness.

Ocean at the Window: Hungarian Prose and Poetry since 1945

Ocean at the Window: Hungarian Prose and Poetry since 1945

SWÓJ I OBCY W PROZIE WĘGIERSKIEJ ORAZ SŁOWACKIEJ

In the 19th century, Hungarian and Slovak literature markedly specified and acquired contrasting features. The author states that in the Hungarian literature, especially in prose, Slovaks tend to represent folk types with the prevailing peasant archetype. Hungarians formed the upper class of the society until the establishment of Czechoslovakia in 1918 which also impacted the choice of literary protagonists and environments. The author of this study examines the image of Hungarians in Slovak prose the image of Slovaks in Hungarian prose. Consequently, he has created a typology of characters and environments in an attempt to apply imagology when comparing literary works of Hungarian and Slovak origin.