Today, with major archaeological discoveries in Southwark, Marvin Carlson’s study on the semiotics of theater architecture, and insights from the reconstructed (New) Globe, it is increasingly clear that Shakespeare’s “plays were written for the space in which they were to be performed: and that therefore to understand Shakespeare, one should understand his playhouses” (Stern 21). Sándor Hevesi, one of the most important yet still somewhat overlooked figures in early-twentieth-century Hungarian theater, was among the first to recognize that Shakespeare’s plays did not naturally suit the proscenium stage. A critic-turned-director and dramaturg, he recognized that it was the architecture of nineteenth-century European theaters that necessitated the radical editorial and dramaturgical interventions, often infamously substantial textual cuts, characteristic of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Shakespearean productions. This recognition fueled his devoted explorations into the workings of the Shakespeare stage. In Hevesi’s time, little was known about the original dimensions and staging conditions of Elizabethan playhouses. In a 2023 paper, I argued that by 1923, through his staging of The Taming of the Shrew, Hevesi believed he had discovered the real Shakespeare. This paper explores the starting point of that journey to assess the significance of Hevesi’s anticipatory ideas.
One of the most important terrains of the European search for new ways in politics between the two world wars was the debate on the reorganization and tasks of the state and, within it, of the economy and society. This topic dominated academic discourse in the 1920s and 1930s. The thinkers who sought answers—economists, philosophers, historians, sociologists, and ecclesiastics—could build on the work of early predecessors, reaching back as far as Thomas Aquinas’s “organic view of society,” later embodied in the economic and political theory of Jesuit solidarism. The common feature of the theories that emerged in the interwar period was that they approached the construction of the state not from the point of view of the individual, but from that of social groups. Vid Mihelics, a prominent exponent of these ideas in Hungary, devoted his journalistic, scientific, and political activities to the Hungarian Catholic revival. His interests focused on social issues and related teachings of the Church. His writings sought solutions through the ideas of Christian humanism, which for him was “the inalienable essence of true Europeanism.” His writings can help us better understand how interconnected Hungarian intellectual life was with European trends in the interwar period. zachar.peter.krisztian@uni-nke.hu
The article reviews recent scholarship on Hungarian cinema in the age of rising nationalism, anti-Semitism and World War II. It looks at two books specifically as they examine issues such as the film industry’s transition from silent to sound film, the nationalization of the film industry system, the impact of anti-Jewish legislation on film making, and political censorship. The article also considers how the books address genre and the birth of star system in Hungarian film.
The Hungarian populist writers Gyula Illyés and Lajos Nagy visited the Soviet Union together during the summer of 1934 as guests of the Union of Soviet Writers. Upon their return to Hungary, Illyés and Nagy published their impressions in separate travelogues.Although they both stressed that they strived for objectivity in their travel reports, they did not fully succeed in their efforts. Their perspectives were colored by a feeling of cultural superiority carried over from their experiences in the Hungary of the 1930s. Their writing was also tainted with anti-Semitism, as evidenced by their reflections on the life of Jews in Russia and Ukraine. Although their hosts took them to model institutions on a government-designed grand tour, they were not won over to the communist cause and failed to become fellow travelers.
Turán, Tamás and Carsten Wilke, eds. 2016. Modern Jewish Scholarship in Hungary – the "Science of Judaism" Between East and West. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg. 414 pages.
Csehy, Zoltán. 2014. Szodoma és környéke: Homoszocialitás, barátságretorika és queer irányulások a magyar költészetben ('Sodom and its Environs: Homosociality, Friendship Rhetoric and Queer Orientations in Hungarian Poetry'). Budapest: Kalligram.
As the above title indicates, because of the publication schedule of Hungarian Cultural Studies this bibliography straddles 2016-2017, covering the period since the publication in Fall of 2016 of last year’s bibliography in this journal. Each year’s bibliography may also be supplemented by earlier items, which were retrieved only recently. Although this bibliography series can only concentrate on English-language items, occasional items of particular interest in other languages may be included.
For a more extensive bibliography of Hungarian Studies from about 2000 to 2010, for which this is a continuing update, see Louise O. Vasvári, Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, and Carlo Salzani. “Bibliography for Work in Hungarian Studies as Comparative Central European Studies.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture (Library) (2011): http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibrary/hungarianstudiesbibliography/
As an introduction to the four papers published in the 2017 issue of Hungarian Cultural Studies, this paper summarizes the specificities of comparative literary studies in the Central and Eastern European context, as examined by a research group affiliated with the Institute of Literary Studies, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and various other universities throughout Hungary. The topics and thoughts expressed in these studies were originally explored during a conference session held at the AILC Vienna Congress in 2016. While Central and Eastern Europe’s participation in the world of comparative studies has formed a core element for both the research group’s interest and the Vienna session, this field has been expanded to discuss Central and Eastern European literatures within the context of international comparative studies as well as the migration (emigration) of these literatures. After presenting the four papers included in the 2017 issue of Hungarian Cultural Studies, the Guest Editors provide a brief preview of the next four papers to be published in the journal’s 2018 issue.
This essay investigates the literary work of Sebastian Brunner (1814-1893), a politically conservative Austrian writer. Focusing on his satirical novel «Die Prinzenschule zu Möpselglück» (1848), it argues two theses. First, it will show that the religiously and politically conservative worldview the novel articulates is not a regression behind Enlightenment ideals. Second, it argues that this novel, despite its strong polemic against the political agenda of the Jungdeutschen, is a direct heir to their aesthetic innovations of the genre.
History of Austria. Liechtenstein. Hungary. Czechoslovakia
Kind-Kovács, Friederike. 2014. Written Here, Published There - How Underground Literature Crossed the Iron Curtain. Budapest: Central European University Press. 520 pp.
In the English-speaking world Ármin Vámbéry is known as a traveler in Central Asia and a student of Turkic cultures and languages. In his native Hungary he is also known for his disagreement with linguists who believed that Hungarian belonged to the Ugric branch of the Finno-Ugric languages—a part of the Uralic linguistic family. Rather than accepting this theory, Vámbéry contended that Hungarian was largely a Turkic language that belonged more to the Altaic family. Few people know that Vámbéry also expressed strong opinions about the genesis of the Hungarian nation. The most important aspect of Vámbéry’s theory about Hungarian origins is the thesis that Hungarian ethnogenesis took place—beginning with late Roman times or even earlier—in the Carpathian Basin. A corollary of this proposition is that the nomadic tribes that conquered the Carpathian Basin at the end of the ninth century were Turkic peoples who were few in numbers and were assimilated by the region’s autochthonous—and by then Hungarian-speaking—population. This paper outlines Vámbéry’s arguments and describes to what extent research on this subject in the century since Vámbéry’s death has confirmed or contradicted his unconventional ideas.
This article summarizes the findings of Jobbitt’s early research into the experiences of Hungarian migrants in Portugal after World War II, and the way in which the Hungarian Revolution and its suppression in 1956 was politicized by Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar’s Estado Novo [‘New State’]. Recognizing the propagandistic value of the 1956 Revolution and the refugee crisis that it created, the Salazar government celebrated Hungary’s freedom fighters as martyrs while simultaneously painting an idealized and simplistic picture of an honorable Christian nation locked in a fundamentally moral struggle against the civilizational threat posed by Soviet barbarism and communist terror. However, in attempting to align its own political and ideological message with the actions of Hungary’s revolutionaries and the suffering of its refugees, the Salazar regime ran the very real risk of highlighting the numerous contradictions, shortcomings, and injustices that defined the Estado Novo. Ultimately the Salazar regime’s propagandistic support of the Revolution betrayed the hypocrisy of an authoritarian, clerico-fascist state, one that was not only unwilling to accept Hungarian refugees on a long-term basis, but also guilty of suppressing its own people and its non-European colonial subjects.
The Zsebatlasz [‘Pocket Atlas’] series published in Hungary between 1909 and 1919 was a business venture of the Hungarian Geographical Institute [Magyar Földrajzi Intézet]. Intended primarily for the teaching of geography at the secondary school level in Hungary, the main aim was to broaden the worldview and expand the knowledge of secondary school pupils. Before and during World War I, the books were militarised, and promoted Hungarian national points of views. Short articles in each of the volumes provided analyses and reports of the war, focusing in particular on the geographical problems arising from ever-shifting territorial transformations. To aid in the transfer of this political-geographical knowledge, coloured maps were published in a huge number in the volumes. This paper outlines the evolution of this “Pocket Atlas” series, and in so doing provides the basis for critical reflection on the relationship between political power, nationalist propaganda, and the production of geographical knowledge.