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 regions (and Hungarian cultures) 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, Madach, and Jokai, whereas the twentieth century is represented by Karinthy, Babits and Szathmari. In the interpretations the results of contemporary scholarship is applied, particularly the works of Lyman Tower Sargent, Gregory Claeys and Fatima Vieira. Zsolt Cziganyik is Associate Professor at Eotvos Lorand 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 resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.