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• Alligators in the Sewers: Urban Legends about Terrifying Animals and Frightening Places

  7-29

  Éva Mikos

  Views:

  100

  The aim of the present study is to provide an overall picture of the nature of urban folklore using the “Alligators in the Sewers” urban legend type circulated in both the Hungarian and international press and by word of mouth. While contemporary legends have attracted only sporadic attention in Hungarian research to date, by illustrating the historical development of this legend type the aim of the present case study is to demonstrate how the phenomenon has existed in the Hungarian press for almost 200 years.

  The present study attempts to identify the kind of opportunities for interpretation offered by these stories in the field of folkloristics; the extent to which they are relevant beyond their literal meaning; and the ways in which they shed light on modern-day understandings of the world. Giant reptiles that are not indigenous to Europe are terrifying to the average individual, while at the same time they evoke a yearning for the natural world in city dwellers trapped amid concrete walls. Urban sewers and storm drains hold similar terrors: on the one hand, they are there to remove filth and symbolize the more unsavory aspects of urban life, while on the other hand their hidden presence beneath the ground offers ample opportunity for the projection of numerous fantasies. Animals that lurk in the sewers, from where they emerge to attack people, are manifestations, contained within simple, traditional narrative frameworks, of the murkiness of highly structured societies and of the sense of danger that this opacity engenders in us. The emergence and persistence of such stories can be attributed to a number of social practices, such as circuses, sideshows, and the keeping of reptiles as pets, along with the respective press reports and rumors.

• Stereotypes Surrounding the Hungarian Peasantry During the Years of the First World War

  51-70

  Tamás Csíki

  Views:

  152

  The paper examines the use and political, ideological, and social meanings of the term peasant and its synonyms. It reflects on how these meanings were modified as a consequence of the structural and experiential changes in the social situation of the agrarian population.  The textual analysis is based on publications from the press during the First World War and, thus, the concepts, in their contexts, can be under­stood first as instruments for propaganda and mental mobilization, that is to say, as political action. Second, these notions and concepts also incorporated past (histor­ical) phenomena and future expectations, through which they offered arguments for programs and ideas to transform society. Third, the texts frequently prompted debates in the media, which strengthened the discursive nature of the press, the controlled publicity, and the usage of vocabulary and language. By the same token, they can also represent a chance to examine the social stereotypes and the experience of personal relations crystallized in these texts.