Hungarian Studies in London
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 [...]
A small exhibition will accompany the roundtable discussion, ‘Hungary’s ‘West’?: Literature and Culture at the Centenary of Nyugat‘, and will be on display on Thursday 11 December until 5 pm, on the second floor of the SSEES library, 16 Taviton Street, London, WC1H 0BW.
Inspired by the SSEES Library’s rich Nyugat collection, the exhibition presents a [...]
We are delighted to announce the roundtable discussion, ‘Hungary’s ‘West’?: Literature and Culture at the Centenary of Nyugat‘, to be held on Thursday 11 December, 3.00-6.00 pm, in the Old Refectory, Wilkins Building, University College London.
On the occasion of the centenary of the literary periodical Nyugat (’West’, 1908-41), scholars, translators and journalists will discuss Hungarian [...]
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 [...]
We discussed the interwar népi-urbánus vita, with a view to understanding its context, semantics and contemporary articulation. Commonly referred to in English as the dispute between (agrarian) populists and urbanists (or ‘metropolitans’), and undoubtedly a major component of public political discourse since 1989, we began by reaching consensus on what it was not: a clash [...]
On Friday 13 June we began discussing problems encountered translating Hungarian literary criticism. The immediate problem we run into is that, as a rule, translation requires reading and understanding. Establishment literary criticism (Spenót, Szerb, etc.) is particularly difficult to translate, but not for lexical or syntactic reasons.
Such criticism ‘presses buttons’ in the original, classifies into [...]
Two new links have been added to the Links page, which are worth mentioning here:
Hogymondom.hu, a dictionary of contemporary slang to which readers can contribute. Lots of fun, expect profanity.
Hungarian Spectrum, an excellent English-language blog on current affairs, written by Éva Balogh, which features intelligent and insightful posts on politics, media and history.
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 [...]