Ellen Key’s Visit to Budapest, 1905 (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
“The Swedish Pallas” and “ Radical Europe’s aunt” needs no introduction: a celebrity of her time, Ellen Key (1849-1926) was a writer, essayist, teacher, educator, debater, literary critic, lecturer and the founder of Swedish interior design. A friend to renowned authors, painters and scholars from Scandinavia and all over the world, she played a central role in the emergence of the Det Moderna Genombrottet [‘The Modern Breakthrough’], an influential movement in Scandinavian naturalism and debating literature which replaced romanticism toward the end of the 19th century. Not long after her world-famous book, The Century of the Child, was published, Key wrote the fairly controversial book, Love and Marriage. The negative critical reception this book received in Sweden prompted her to embark upon on a lecture tour around Europe. Other than visiting Berlin, Vienna and Prague, in March, 1905, she held two talks in Budapest, Hungary. The reception of her lectures was mixed: her female audience exalted her views while men disparaged her work. This lecture provides a historical overview of Ellen Key’s work while also analyzing her visit to Budapest and subsequent reception in Hungary based on the contemporary press. The broader aim of this examination is to answer why Hungarian research literature exclusively views Ellen Key as an educator and the author of The Century of the Child when her work extended far beyond either role.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Andrea Poros is an Assistant Professor at Eötvös Loránd University's Faculty of Primary and Preschool Education at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature.She is pursuing her PhD in Scandinavian studies. The topic of her thesis is Ellen Key's role as a writer in the Modern Breakthrough (Det Moderna Genombrottet) movement, the relationship between her and the 19th Scandinavian women writers and her reception in Hungary. Her most significant publications to date are entitled: Radical Europe’s Aunt and Sweden’s Pallas: Ellen Key (in Swedish ,2019) and Ellen Key before ’The Century of the Child’; (in Hungarian, 2016).