Language/Literature paper by Novák, Anikó
Captured by Stereotypes – Representations of Refugees in Contemporary Hungarian Literature (Accepted)
Type of Abstract (select):Abstract (max. 250 words):
The lecture attempts to interpret the literary representations of refugees in contemporary Hungarian literature. The refugee crisis of recent years is not the central topic of Hungarian literature, but it can be found for example in the texts of Sándor Jászberényi, Zsuzsa Selyem, Ottó Tolnai, Krisztina Tóth, and Dénes Krusovszky. The refugees show up in the works in different ways. In some of them, migrants are background elements; in others, they have a more significant role, but we can see them as strangers, as the manifestation of Other throughout. The reader sees the refugees through the narrator's or the protagonist's eye. The migrants seldom have a voice. Based on the theories of stereotypes and strangeness, the work deals with the issues such as migrant, stranger, border crossing, refugee literature, migrant literature. Furthermore, the lecture compares the analyzed texts with the relevant pieces of world literature.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Anikó Novák, PhD. is an Assistant Professor at the University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Philosophy (Novi Sad, Serbia). She graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Novi Sad. She received her PhD. in literary sciences at the University of Szeged in 2014. Her research interests include modern and contemporary Hungarian literature, museum studies, and migration literature.