Cultures of Memory/ Memories of Culture:
Twentieth-Century Hungarian Literature and Culture in an Anglophone context
A conference in Debrecen, Hungary, September 10th 2004
It has been semi-seriously proposed by baffled scientists
that Hungarians are not actually native earthlings, but a super-intelligent
extra-terrestrial race which has managed to blend in with humanity, only
giving themselves away by the genius of their works and the absolute
impenetrability of their language.
--- Nicholas Lezard
I returned from the West, and I bought home in my nostrils
and nerves that benumbing lethargy, impudent hostility and arrogant
superiority with which the West viewed the fate of Eastern Europe.
--- Sándor Márai
Beyond the Ruritanian clichés, beyond the somewhat dreary exoticism that
totalitarianism seemed to confer on Hungarians for many observers, beyond
the glamour of the sturdy little nation standing up against the mighty
Russians, beyond the hangover of the cold war and dictatorship, what does it
mean to read Hungarian literature and culture in and from Britain/Europe?
Can critical concerns with the 'Third World' apply to the former 'Second
world'? What are the literary and cultural effects of European Enlargement?
What literary and cultural memories are similar or divergent? The recent
international critical and commercial success of a number of Hungarian
novels -- Sándor Márai's Embers, Péter Nádas's Book of Memories, and Antal
Szerb's Traveller and Moonlight - and the awarding of the Nobel Prize to
Imre Kertész has resulted in a heightened awareness of Hungarian literature
and culture in Western Europe. Simultaneously, European enlargement adds
topicality to intercultural enterprises of stock-taking and remembering such
as the one undertaken by this conference.
An encounter between critics from Hungary, the region and the UK, this
conference will address these questions through reading Hungarian literature
and culture from a variety of cultural, geographical and theoretical
perspectives. It is hoped that the dialogue of the papers will contribute to
a better understanding of intercultural dialogue in post-communist Europe,
pointing towards viable critical and theoretical positions for continuing
cultural dialogues between Central-Eastern Europe and Western Europe.
Papers covering any aspects of Hungarian literature and culture, alert to
the implications of the question raised above, are invited.
This conference is a sequel to the successful Contrasting Memories, Cultural
Dialogues:
Literary encounters between the UK and Hungary conference held at the
British Liberary in 2003 and is also funded by the British Academy.
There is no conference fee and there are some bursaries for travel from the
UK.
Abstracts, by 15th June 2004, by e-mail should be sent to
Tamás Bényei, tbenyei@tigris.unideb.hu
Robert Eaglestone r.eaglestone@rhul.ac.uk
Eleanor Byrne e.byrne@mmu.ac.u
Dr Robert Eaglestone
Lecturer in Twentieth Century Literature,
Editor, Routledge Critical Thinkers,
Department of English
Royal Holloway, University of London
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or write Erika Lin: elin@english.upenn.edu
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