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During the last few decades there has been a growing recognition of the great role that remembering and collective memory play in forming the historical awareness. In addition, the dominant national form of history writing also met some challenges on the side of a transnational approach to the past. In A Nation Divided by History and Memory, a prominent Hungarian historian sheds light on how Hungary's historical image has become split as a consequence of the differences between the historian's conceptualisation of national history and its diverse representations in personal and collective memory. The book focuses on the shocking experiences and the intense memorial reactions generated by a few key historical events and the way in which they have been interpreted by the historical scholarship. The argument of A Nation Divided by History and Memory is placed into the context of an international historical discourse. This pioneering work is essential and enlightening reading for all historians, many sociologists, political scientists, social psychologists and university students.
List of contents
Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Two Kinds of History; Part I: The Past as Experience and Memory; 1. The Experience and Remembrance of World War I; 2. Image and Reality of a Divided Country; 3. Collective Memory as a Political Instrument; 4. Jewish Experience and the Hungarian Memory of the Holocaust; 5. Memory and Discourse about the 1956 Revolution; Part II History as Constructed by Historians; 6. National Culture, Cultural Nationalism, and History; 7. Cultic and Ironic Visions of Hungary's History; 8. Revolution, Uprising, Civil War; 9. Conclusion; Bibliography; Index
About the author
Gábor Gyáni is Research Professor at the Institute of History Research Center for Humanities, and Professor at Roland Eötvös University Budapest. His numerous English language books include
Parlor and Kitchen: Housing and Domestic Culture in Budapest, 1870-1940 (2002),
Identity and the Urban Experience: Fin-de-Siécle Budapest (2004),
Social History of Hungary from the Reform Era to the End of the Twentieth Century (co-authored with György Kövér, Tibor Valuch) (2004).
Summary
In A Nation Divided by History and Memory a prominent Hungarian historian sheds light on how Hungary’s historical image has become split as a consequence of the differences between the historian’s conceptualisation of national history and its diverse representations in personal and collective memory.
