Language and Literature paper by Basa, Enikő M.
Hungarian Poets: Using Historical Narrative to Prepare for a Better Future
Type of Abstract (select):Abstract (max. 250 words):
Hungarian literature has often looked to the past not with nostalgia but with an agenda. Zrinyi praised his ancestor for heroic deeds to encourage his country to throw off the Ottoman yoke through a united effort. The Romantic poets, notably Vörösmarty and Arany also reached into the past to revive pride in athe nation and to urge it to step forward into a country in livelly dialogue with its future. The vatic vision of Petőfi was less motivated by history than by folklore, yet even thisd reaches back to an earlier, presumably simpler and better times. The goal of all was to create a nation proud of its past and unified by a shared tradition. Their example can show us how the past can be a gateway to the future.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Enikő Molnár Basa received her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After teaching for several years at universities in the Washington, DC area, she took a position at the Library of Congress. In 2002-2004 she held the Kluge Staff Fellowship at the Library working on what will eventually be a book examining Hungarian literature from the point of view of its political and social commitment. Dr. Basa is the author of Sándor Petőfi in the Twayne World Author Series (G.K. Hall) and editor of volumes in the series on Mihály Vitéz Csokonai, Imre Madách, Kálmán Mikszáth, and Ferenc Molnár, as well as Dezső Kosztolányi and Miklós Radnóti prepared for the series but published by the Finnisch-Ugrarisches Jahrbuch at the University of Munich. She was guest editor of Hungarian Literature in the Review of National Literatures series, and contributed some articles to it. Author of several articles on Hungarian and comparative literature, she has also been active in Hungarian and literary professional organizations, presenting papers at a wide variety of venues. She is the Executive Director of the American Hungarian Educators Association, and received the Presidential Gold Medal of Hungary from Árpád Göncz in 1997. In 2010 she received the Péter Basa Award of the American Hungarian Educators Association. Dr. Basa taught at the U. of Debrecen in the Fall semester of 2004 and at the U. of Szeged in the fall of 2009.