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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 region's (and Hungarian culture's) 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, Madách, and Jókai, whereas the twentieth century is represented by Karinthy, Babits and Szathmári. In the interpretations the results of contemporary scholarship is applied, particularly the works of Lyman Tower Sargent, Gregory Claeys and Fátima Vieira.
List of contents
Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. The Circulation of Utopian Ideals in Hungary.- Chapter 3. The Moderate Optimism of the Enlightenment: Bessenyei in Totoposz.- Chapter 4. Failed Utopias in Human History: The Tragedy of Man by Imre Madách.- Chapter 5. Utopia Proper in Hungarian Literature: Eternal Peace and Future Technology in Mór Jókai's The Novel of the Century to Come.- Chapter 6. Gulliver in Hungary: Karinthy's Faremido and Capillaria.- Chapter 7. Dystopia in Interwar Hungary: Pilot Elza or the Perfect Society by Mihály Babits.- Chapter 8. Sándor Szathmári's Dystopias and the Positivistic Simplification of Humans.- Chapter 9. Conclusion./
About the author
Zsolt Czigányik is Associate Professor at Eötvös Loránd 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.
Report
"Czigányik succeed sin offering a study that is both innovative and complex. His method and the multitude of perspectives adopted show hermeneutical rigor, while maintaining the study's accessibility not only for the academic milieu, but also for the larger public." (Hora iu Tohatan, caietele echinox, Vol. 46, 2024)
"Zsolt Czigányik, who is a renowned specialist in utopian literature, has titled his history Utopia between East and West in Hungarian Literatur... . Hungarian utopianism had the luck to have attracted some of the best Hungarian writers. ... this scholarly superb contribution of Czigányi's book to the understanding of utopia '... would be supplemented by translations into English and other languages of the discussed works still demanding the command of the Hungarian language in order to be enjoyed." (Mariano Martín Rodríguez, Revista Hélice, Vol. 10 (1), 2024)
"I regard this as a major work that invites comparison with other fictional philosophical treatments of artificial intelligence. Czigányik's rich overview of the unique Hungarian contribution to the common utopian tradition should secure recognition of Hungary's rightful place in it and stimulate needed further research." (Ralph Dumain, Hungarian Cultural Studies, Vol. 16, 2023)
