Utopia Between East and West in Hungarian Literature

Beschreibung

This book focuses on the most important utopian and dystopian literary texts in nineteenth and twentieth-century Hungarian literature, and therefore widens the scope of the traditionally Anglophone canon. Utopian studies is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary, and this research integrates literary hermeneutics with ideas and methods from political science and the history of ideas. In doing so, it argues that Hungarian utopianism was influenced by the region’s (and Hungarian culture’s) position of permanent liminality between Western and Eastern European patterns of power structures, social and political order. After a thorough methodological introduction, some early modern texts written in Hungary are discussed, while the detailed analyses focus on nineteenth-century texts, written by Bessenyei, Madách, and Jókai, whereas the twentieth century is represented by Karinthy, Babits and Szathmári. In the interpretations the results of contemporary scholarship is applied, particularly the works of Lyman Tower Sargent, Gregory Claeys and Fátima Vieira. 
Zsolt Czigányik is Associate Professor at Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary. He has been a visiting professor at Central European University, and a scholar at the Gerda Henkel Foundation. His research focuses on the interaction of politics and literature in modern and contemporary prose, especially in utopian and dystopian literature.

This book focuses on the most important utopian and dystopian literary texts in nineteenth and twentieth-century Hungarian literature, and therefore widens the scope of the traditionally Anglophone canon. Utopian studies is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary, and this research integrates literary hermeneutics with ideas and methods from political science and the history of ideas. In doing so, it argues that Hungarian utopianism was influenced by the region’s (and Hungarian culture’s) position of permanent liminality between Western and Eastern European patterns of power structures, social and political order. After a thorough methodological introduction, some early modern texts written in Hungary are discussed, while the detailed analyses focus on nineteenth-century texts, written by Bessenyei, Madách, and Jókai, whereas the twentieth century is represented by Karinthy, Babits and Szathmári. In the interpretations the results of contemporary scholarship is applied, particularly the works of Lyman Tower Sargent, Gregory Claeys and Fátima Vieira. 
Awarded the Publication Excellence Prize by the Faculty of Humanities of ELTE University in Budapest Provides the first comprehensive study of Hungarian utopian literature in English Seeks to understand Central Europe through the differences between Eastern and Western utopian thought

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Zsolt Czigányik

Themen in »Utopia Between East and West in Hungarian Literature«

utopian literature dystopian literature Central European history Hungarian literary canon Eastern vs Western Europe

Stimmen zu »Utopia Between East and West in Hungarian Literature«

“Czigányik succeed sin offering a study that is both innovative and complex. His method and the multitude of perspectives adopted show hermeneutical rigor, while maintaining the study’s accessibility not only for the academic milieu, but also for the larger public.” (Horațiu Tohătan, caietele echinox, Vol. 46, 2024)

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