Hungarian Studies in London
On Thursday 27 March, we once again had the pleasure of Len Rix’s company, this time discussing his translations of Antal Szerb, Utas és holdvilág, 1937 (Journey by Moonlight, Pushkin, 2000), Magda Szabó, Az ajtó, 1987 (The Door, Vintage, 2005), and his article ‘In Praise of Translation’, recently published in the Hungarian Quarterly.
Len described the [...]
On 27 November, Eszter Tarsoly and BA finalist Victoria Ford gave a joint presentation on grammatical possession. Hungarian has no genitive and instead uses ‘head marking,’ where the possessed thing (e.g. János háza) is marked, rather than the possessor (John’s house).
Eszter and Victoria presented was a comparative analysis of possessive constructions in English and Hungarian, with reference [...]
Andrea Talabér recently presented the work of Hungarian historian and Open Society Archives director István Rév, together with articles from Népszabadság covering the official 15 March celebrations of 1967 and 1974. Andrea outlined Rév’s focus on the function of show trials, and the manipulation of personal histories (not to mention historical dates), within the context [...]
In her recent talk on the subject of her research in progress (nationalism in Hungarian popular culture), Jenny Rasell addressed a number of matters. Remarking on the sudden proliferation of nationalist symbols, and with reference to recent opinion polls and academic research on xenophobia, antisemitism, racism and homophobia in Hungary, Jenny presented a number of texts [...]
This term the focus of the discussions is reading and writing. Speakers at the seminars present a text and other participants, from various disciplines, offer their reading and interpretation of the text in question. A practical outcome of the discussions is to offer an insight into the process of writing in the broadest sense: from [...]
Rachel Beckles Willson, Reader in Music at Royal Holloway, gave a talk earlier this year on composer Sándor Veress (1907-92), and in particular the ways in which one’s biography can be altered to suit changing circumstances.
Veress left his home town of Cluj for Budapest in 1916, where he studied piano under Bartók and composition under [...]
2008 marks the hundredth anniversary of the publication of Nyugat (West, 1908-41), Hungary’s modern literary journal par excellence. Together with the translation workshops, we will be organising a few activities to discuss Hungarian literature and culture at Nyugat’s centenary, with a focus on the constructions, collocations, and location (geopolitical or otherwise) of ‘West’.
Celebratory and [...]
On 29 February, PhD candidate Rob Gray presented the subject of his doctoral thesis, land reform in early nineteenth-century Hungary.
Rob began with an overview of the ideology of reform. Part reaction to economic stagnation and the dreaded nemzethalál (’national death’), part critique of feudal society, reformers sought to revitalise the nobility and, by extension, the [...]
In December last year, first year BA Politics student Sandra Bernick gave a talk on the role language plays in Estonian national identity, the values of linguistic isolation, and contemporary discourses on identity.
Sandra asked what role language had played in the construction of Estonian national identity. Until the late nineteenth century, inhabitants of the villages [...]
On Friday 1 February, Dr Gwen Jones discussed some features of urban transformation and change since 1989. Beginning with an overview of the assumption that the Soviet-style system originated and ended in cities, according to which state socialism (re-)created and shaped urban structures in its own image, she summarised the features of the socialist city, [...]