Name: Hungarian Perspectives on the Western Canon
SKU: 1-4438-4491-8
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Hungarian Perspectives on the Western Canon

Post-Comparative Readings

Edited By: László Bengi, Gábor Mezei, Ernő Kulcsár Szabó

£29.99

In this collection, Hungarian literature is read together with canonical works of the Western literary tradition. The text scrutinises the distinction between “major” and “minor” literatures, showing that this can highlight previously unknown components of the literary tradition.

In this collection, Hungarian literature is read together with canonical works of the Western literary tradition. The book studies the distinction between “major” and “minor”…

In this collection, Hungarian literature is read together with canonical works of the Western literary tradition. The book studies the distinction between “major” and “minor” literatures, showing that such parallel readings may highlight previously unknown components of the literary tradition. The book does not hold traditional comparative methods, based on verifiable mediations or transactions between national philologies and national literary narratives, to be the exclusive standard of interpretation; readings can concentrate on common surfaces and textual events instead. This is what is meant by ‘post-comparative’ perspectives, a term to indicate that the conditions of a comparative reading never precede the reading itself. On this basis, the present volume points at several possibilities of how a common ground between texts can be created, especially because the chapters within it perform parallel readings in highly different ways.

László Bengi is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. His research focuses on Hungarian literature and its interaction with natural sciences in the late 19th and the 20th centuries. His publications include Az elbeszélés kihívása [The Challenge of Narration] (2000); Elbeszélt halál [Death, Narrated] (2012); and Márton László (2015).

Ernő Kulcsár Szabó is Professor at the Department of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. His main fields of research are hermeneutics, literary theory and 20th-century Hungarian and German literature. His publications include A magyar irodalom története 1945-1991 [The History of Hungarian Literature 1945-1991] (1993); Irodalom és hermeneutika [Literature and Hermeneutics] (2000); and Kulturtechnik Philologie. Zur Theorie des Umgangs mit Texten (2011), among others.

Gábor Mezei is Assistant Lecturer at the Department of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. His main fields of interest are 20th-century Hungarian literature, media theory and the concepts of writing. His publications include “Following a Source Text while Being Different – Medial Aspects of a Hypogram’s Translation” in Tanulmányok. Irodalomtudományi Doktori Iskola (2012), and his first book, Fordítás és anyagiság – Az írás mint kultúrtechnika az Örök barátainkban [Translation and Materiality – Writing as a Cultural Technique in Örök barátaink] (2016

Gábor Tamás Molnár is Senior Lecturer at the Institute for Hungarian Literary and Cultural Studies at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. His main areas of interest are theories of interpretation, the modern novel, and the teaching of literature. He has published four books in Hungarian, in addition to a number of articles in various edited volumes.

Tibor Bónus, István Fried, Ágnes Hansági, Beatrix Kricsfalusi, Ernő Kulcsár Szabó , Zoltán Kulcsár-Szabó, Tamás Lénárt, Csongor Lőrincz, Péter L. Varga, Ábel Tamás, Ferenc Vincze