Accepted Abstracts

Manifestations of Hungarian Identity in Literature

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Concentrating on some important literary and theoretical works, the paper examines how Hungarian identity has been given different meanings and various forms of expression over the past few centuries. Hungarian identity is an ever-changing concept and the question of belonging and what is Hungarian has been subject to numerous interpretations. On the other hand, the concept of identity itself has been in the centre of heated debates in the past few decades. It has been a matter of interest for literary and cultural studies and has been discussed in the field of postcolonial, ethnic and feminist criticism, to name but a few, from angles ranging from psychoanalytic through poststructuralist to cultural theories. To illustrate the heat of debates and their result, it is sufficient to refer to Paula M. L. Moya’s observation that “much of what has been written about identity during this period seeks to delegitimate, and in some cases eliminate, the concept itself by revealing its ontological, epistemological, and political limitations.” In response to essentialist thinking, the idea that individuals or groups of individuals have a fixed and recognizable “essence” by which they can be classified, the concept of a sense of stable identity has been challenged and substantially undermined by postmodern, especially poststructuralist, critics. It is in this complex context that the paper seeks to find certain tangible notions of national belonging from the time of Romanticism to the present, from Hungary as a geographical territory to countries as far as Canada.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
János Kenyeres graduated from Eötvös Loránd University in English and Hungarian literature in 1991 and earned his doctoral degree in literary studies from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2000. He is currently Visiting Professor of Hungarian at the University of Toronto, a position he filled from 2005 to 2008, as well as in March-April 2015. As visiting professor, his work is concentrated on Hungarian literature, cinema and culture. He has also given lectures as visiting professor at the University of Barcelona and the Sapienza University of Rome. At his home institution, Eötvös Loránd University, he is Director of the School of English and American Studies, where he teaches English and Canadian literature, Canadian cinema, and literary theory. He has several publications in these fields, including the book Revolving around the Bible: A Study of Northrop Frye (2003). He became a habilitated doctor in literary studies in 2014 and is member of the Modern English and American Literature Doctoral Program at Eötvös Loránd University. He was president (2009-2015) and vice-president (2015-2018) of the Central European Association for Canadian Studies and has been co-editor of The AnaChronisT since 2002.

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