Worlds Of Hungarian Writing

Worlds of Hungarian Writing responds to the rapidly growing interest in Hungarian authors throughout the English-speaking world. Addressing an international audience, the essays in the collection highlight the intercultural contexts that have molded the conventions, genres and institutions of Hungarian writing from the nineteenth century to the present. They are mapping some of the ways in which a modern literature is produced by encounters with languages, cultures, and media external to its traditionally conceived boundaries. But rather than viewing intercultural exchange as an external force, the collection recognizes its enabling importance to the globalizing reception and circulation of Hungarian writing over the continuities and constraints implied by more traditional national narratives. Worlds of Hungarian Writing posits intercultural exchange as the very substance of a literary culture.Discussions of the politics of appropriation and translation, of the impact of émigré writers and critics, and of the use of world-literary models in genre-formation complement studies of the fate of western leftist critical theory in post-1989 Hungary, of the role of African-American models in contemporary Roma culture, and of the use of photography in late 20th-century prose. The volume spans a wide generic range, from the achievements of such canonical 19th-century critics and poets as József Bajza and János Arany, to neglected women authors-translators such as Theresa Pulszky, to modernist writers and critics like Antal Szerb and György Lukács, and to the contemporary novelists Péter Esterházy, Péter Nádas, and László Krasznahorkai. Each essay is an original contribution to comparative literature and to the study of this Central-European literature, but is intended to be accessible to readers unfamiliar with its traditions.

What is it to be Hungarian? What does it feel like? Most Hungarians are convinced that the rest of the world just doesn't get them. They are right. True, much of the world thinks highly of Hungarians--for reasons ranging from their heroism in the 1956 revolution to their genius as mathematicians, physicists, and financiers. But Hungarians do often seem to be living proof of the old joke that Magyars are in fact Martians: they may be situated in the very heart of Europe, but they are equipped with a confounding language, extraterrestrial (albeit endearing) accents, and an unearthly way of thinking. What most Hungarians learn from life about the Magyar mind is now available, for the first time, in this user-friendly guide to what being Hungarian is all about. The Essential Guide to Being Hungarian brings together twelve authors well-versed in the quintessential ingredients of being Hungarian--from the stereotypical Magyar man to the stereotypical Magyar woman, foods to folk customs, livestock to literature, film to philosophy, politics to porcelain, and scientists to sports. In fifty short, highly readable, often witty, sometimes politically incorrect, but always candid articles, the authors demonstrate that being credibly Hungarian--like being French, Polish or Japanese--is largely a matter of carrying around in your head a potpourri of conceptions and preconceptions acquired over the years from your elders, society, school, the streets, and mass media. Compacting this wealth of knowledge into an irresistible little book, The Essential Guide to Being Hungarian is an indispensable reference that will teach you how to be Hungarian, even if you already are.

Using a wide range of previously unpublished archival, written, and visual sources, Hungarian Women's Activism in the Wake of the First World War offers the first gendered history of the aftermath of the First World War in Hungary. The book examines women's activism during the post-war revolutions and counter-revolution. It describes the dynamic of the period's competing, liberal, Christian-conservative, socialist, radical socialist, and right-wing nationalistic women's movements and pays special attention to women activists of the Right. In this original study, Judith Szapor goes on to convincingly argue that illiberal ideas on family and gender roles, tied to the nation's regeneration and tightly woven into the fabric of the interwar period's right-wing, extreme nationalistic ideology, greatly contributed to the success of Miklós Horthy's regime. Furthermore the book looks at the long shadow that anti-liberal, nationalist notions of gender and family cast on Hungarian society and provides an explanation for their persistent appeal in the post-Communist era. This is an important text for anyone interested in women's history, gender history and Hungary in the 20th century.

The only country in the world with a line in its national anthem as desperate as “this people has already suffered for its past and its future,” Hungary is a nation defined by poverty, despair, and conflict. Its history, of course, took an even darker and more tragic turn during the Holocaust. But the story of the Jews in Hungary is also one of survival, heroism, and even humor—and that is the one acclaimed author Adam Biro sets out to recover in One Must Also Be Hungarian, an inspiring and altogether poignant look back at the lives of his family members over the past two hundred years. A Hungarian refugee and celebrated novelist working in Paris, Biro recognizes the enormous sacrifices that his ancestors made to pave the way for his successes and the envious position he occupies as a writer in postwar Europe. Inspired, therefore, to share the story of his family members with his grandson, Biro draws some moving pictures of them here: witty and whimsical vignettes that convey not only their courageous sides, but also their inner fears, angers, jealousies, and weaknesses—traits that lend an indelible humanity to their portraiture. Spanning the turn of the nineteenth century, two destructive world wars, the dramatic rise of communism, and its equally astonishing fall, the stories here convey a particularly Jewish sense of humor and irony throughout—one that made possible their survival amid such enormous adversity possible. Already published to much acclaim in France, One Must Also Be Hungarian is a wry and compulsively readable book that rescues from oblivion the stories of a long-suffering but likewise remarkable and deservedly proud people.

The 2019 congress of the International Comparative Literature Association attracted many hundreds of scholars from all around the world to Macau. This volume contains a modest selection of papers to discuss the four hottest fields of the discipline: the future of comparison, the position of national and diaspora literature in the context of globalization, the importance of translation, and the concepts of world literature. The contributions cover huge geographical and cultural areas, but pay special attention to the connections between Western (both American and European) and Asian (especially Indian and East-Asian) literatures. The literatures of the world might be different but they are also connected.

This work examines the world's indigenous peoples, their cultures, the countries in which they reside, and the issues that impact these groups.

Dispersed in two continents, four countries and six collections; many of its pages were cropped, cut into four, or lost forever; its history, origin, commissioner and audience are obscure; still, in its fragmented state it presents fifty-eight legends in abundant series of images, on folios fully covered by miniatures, richly gilded, using only one side of the fine parchment; a luxurious codex worthy of a ruler; a unique iconographic treasury of medieval legends; one of the most significant manuscripts of the medieval Hungarian Kingdom – these are all what we call the Hungarian Angevin Legendary.