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• Interpretations of Reagan’s Legacy

  Máté Gergely Balogh

  Views:

  37

  Book review:

  Chidester, Jeffrey L., and Paul Kengor, eds. Reagan’s Legacy in a World Transformed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2015. 294 pages. ISBN 978-0-674-42620-7. Hb. $45.

• The Seaside Resort as Entrapment and Escape in British Cinema

  Zsolt Győri

  Views:

  179

  British cinema has portrayed seaside resorts throughout its history with much dedication. Films featured both residents and visitors, the providers and the consumers of the seaside experience decade after decade by focusing on the synergies between space and identity. This article explores Brighton Rock (John Boulting, 1948), The Entertainer (Tony Richardson, 1960), The Birthday Party (William Friedkin, 1968), Quadrophenia (Franc Roddam, 1979), Bhaji on the Beach (Gurinder Chadha, 1993), and Last Resort (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2000) as representative examples of how the motifs of escape and entrapment—as manifested in the pursuit of various imaginations, ideals, rites of passage and identity quests—changed through the decades that also saw a gradual decline in the popularity of seaside resorts. The fading reputation and eroding image of resorts is analyzed parallel with the identity crises of characters entrapped in subcultural, diasporic, and migrant environments. (ZsGy)

• Anglo-Saxon and Arab Encounters

  Achraf Idrissi

  Views:

  113

  Book review:

  Stampfl, Tanja. A Century of Encounters: Writing the Other in Arab North Africa. New York: Routledge, 2019. 197 pages. ISBN 9781138363106. Pbk. $155.

• Editor's Notes

  Lenke Németh

  Views:

  40

  Editor's Notes

• The Petrified Men and the Scarecrow: Substance, Body, and Self-image in Seamus Heaney’s Bog Poems

  József Pap

  Views:

  82

  Seamus Heaney’s poetry was engaged with violence for decades. His artistic exploration of land and fossils revolved around the same questions: to what extent can a human being move himself away from an inherent “tribalism”? To what extent is identity inherited through history and what rights, responsibilities come with it? These questions arose in the author's oeuvre when the horrors of civil war reached their peak in Northern Ireland. The issues of shared community not only played a significant role in the development of self-identification, they also meant the survival of the sectarian conflict. Starting with the first bog-poems, Heaney was keen on producing a mythology to serve identity, and sometimes allowed his political opinion to filter through the images of Stone Age remains from the bog. For scientists, the investigation of archeological finds means relying on methods such as the necessary carbon analysis and careful identification of evidence, as to who these bodies were, when they lived, what characterized their daily routines, and the times they lived in. The same findings, however, had a different impact on Heaney. He used the metaphor of the land of these ancient bodies, and of history, to engage with the question of identity, but criticism made him reconsider what position he should take on the morality of the given past society. At the same time the poet, who voluntarily shared common roots with these long-forgotten forbears, was the one who started deconstructing their moral heritage in the works written towards the end of his poetic oeuvre. In contrast to earlier poems on bog-bodies, “Tollund” from the 1996 collection, The Spirit Level, and “Tollund Man in Springtime” from 2006, reflect a forward-looking attitude in which Heaney left behind an apologist viewpoint for sectarian violence. (JP)

• Acknowledging Hybridity

  Kata Anna Váró

  Views:

  32

  Book review:

  Oliete-Aldea, Elena. Hybrid Heritage on Screen: The “Raj Revival” in the Thatcher Era. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. ix + 227 pages. ISBN 978-1-137-46396-8. $95.00.

• “Outsider”: The Influence of Migration Experience on the Life and Work of Hungarian-Canadian Songwriter B.B. Gábor

  Victor Kennedy

  Kristian Kolar

  Neža Bojnec Naterer

  Views:

  172

  This paper examines the life and work of Gábor Hegedűs, whose family escaped from the Russian invasion of Hungary in 1956, and settled in Toronto, Canada. Under the stage name B.B. Gábor, he wrote and released several successful songs and albums, many of which drew on his experience as a refugee, and were broadcast around the world, as well as in Canada. His most popular songs were satiric commentaries on culture and politics, comparing life in the USSR and in Canada. These were the themes that drew the most attention from audiences and critics, and earned them international airplay, most notably on Radio Free Europe. His difficulties coping with life as a refugee and as an immigrant to Canada resulted in personal tragedy, yet his ability to express these difficulties in his songs left a lasting legacy in both Canada and his native Hungary. (VK; KK; NBN)

• From Advocacy to Coercion: Public Opinion and Propaganda in the United States from the 1880s to the 1930s

  Éva Mathey

  Views:

  85

  Book review:

  Auerbach, Jonathan. Weapons of Democracy: Propaganda, Progressivism, and American Public Opinion. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2015. xii + 220 pages. ISBN 978-1-4214-1736-3. Hb. $49.95.

• Journeying Across Languages, Cultures, and Literatures: The Poetry of Mervyn Morris

  Pavlína Flajšarová

  Views:

  108

  The West Indian poet Mervyn Morris (1937-) is renowned for espousing the importance of a national language in creating national literature as well as for integrating European poetic heritage with Caribbean literary traditions. Through an exploration of Morris’s selected poems, the paper discusses the role language plays in shaping the themes of diasporic writing and of postcolonial identity, and argues that his works show a deep awareness of the fundamental aspects of West Indian and British culture. Since Morris “refuses to be trapped in the excesses of post-modern Romanticism or political propaganda parading as nationalism” (Thompson), the paper also looks at the presentation of eternal values like love and humanity celebrated in his poems. By foregrounding the frequent use of epiphanies in his poetry, Morris conveys human affection in the frame of colonial and postcolonial history. (PF)

• Editor's Notes

  Éva Mathey

  Views:

  48

  Editor's Notes

• Ostend through the Eyes of British Writers (1830-50): A Seaside Resort Abroad as a Home for the British Genteel Poor

  Pieter Francois

  Views:

  160

  This article analyzes how the British writers Frances Trollope (1779–1863) and William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) described the Belgian coastal resort Ostend in the 1830s and 1840s. A special focus is placed on both the British travelers passing through Ostend and the British resident communities at Ostend. The article will highlight how the assessments of Frances Trollope and William Makepeace Thackeray of Ostend as a coastal resort frequented by the British can be unpacked fruitfully within two overarching themes: the theme of “genteel poverty” and “respectability” on the one hand, and the theme of “national identity” and “religious identity” on the other. These assessments by Frances Trollope and William Makepeace Thackeray are contextualized against the background of contemporary British guidebooks and travel accounts on Ostend, and against some statistics on the British traveller and resident communities in mid-nineteenth century Belgium. (PF)

• Editor's Notes

  Lenke Németh

  Views:

  38

      

• Royall Tyler in Hungary: An American of the League of Nations and Hungarian Reconstruction Efforts, 1924–1938

  Zoltán Peterecz

  Views:

  161

  American-Hungarian relations were rarely closer on the personal level than in the interwar years. Although the United States followed the path of political and diplomatic isolation from Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, and its absence in the League of Nations was conspicuous, in the financial and economic realm it remained more active, and many Americans worked in the various reconstruction projects across Europe either in their private capacities or under the auspices of the League. Royall Tyler was one such person who spent the larger part of the 1920s and 1930s in Hungary. Since the start of the financial reconstruction of Hungary in 1924, Tyler was a constant participant in Hungarian financial life, a contact between the Hungarian government and the League of Nations, and a sharp observer of events throughout the years he spent in Hungary and Europe. This essay focuses on his activities concerning Hungary’s financial and economic reconstruction and recovery. (ZP)

• Editor's Notes

  Éva Mathey

  Views:

  105

  Editor's Notes

• Women in Contemporary Irish Theatre: Widening the Space

  Ruth Illingworth

  Views:

  48

  Book review:

  Haughton, Miriam, and Mária Kurdi, eds. Radical Contemporary Theatre Practices by Women in Ireland. Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2015. 251 pages. ISBN 978-1-909325-75-3. Pbk. €20.

• Travel Writing and the Integration of East-Central Europe: John Paget’s Hungary and Transylvania

  Márta Pellérdi

  Views:

  217

  John Paget’s travelogue from 1839, Hungary and Transylvania; with Remarks on their Condition, Social, Political, and Economical, makes a clear distinction between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Principality of Transylvania, both under Austrian rule at the time, and the rest of Eastern Europe. In terms of the variety and depth of the descriptions of the social, political, and economic conditions in the East-CentralEuropean country and province, Paget’s comprehensive and objective text stands out from the travelogues written about the region in the nineteenth century. This essay demonstrates that Hungary and Transylvania reveals the author’s intention to rediscover the history and culture of a neglected European nation who have attempted for centuries, successfully, and often unsuccessfully, to orient their politics toward the West rather than the East. It suggests that despite the occasional colonial discourse, Paget’s travelogue is an attempt to economically, politically, and culturally promote the integration of Hungary and Transylvania into the more “civilized” West. (MP)

• Death onto Life—A Guide to Edward Albee

  Boróka Prohászka-Rád

  Views:

  61

  Book review:

  Roudané, Matthew. Edward Albee: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2017. 200 pages. ISBN 978-0-521-72695-5. Pbk. £14.99.

• Editor’s Notes

  Zsolt Győri

  Views:

  118

  Editor’s Notes

• Modernism between History and Academia

  Erika Mihálycsa

  Views:

  59

  Books reviewed:

  Bahun, Sanja. Modernism and Melancholia: Writing as Countermourning. Oxford: OUP, 2014. 236 pages. ISBN 978-0-19-997795-6. Hb. $45.00.

  Goldstone, Andrew. Fictions of Autonomy: Modernism from Wilde to de Man. Oxford: OUP, 2013. 204 pages. ISBN 978-0-19-986112-5. Hb. $73.00.

   

• Performing on the Razor’s Edge: On the Aesthetics of the Theatre of Martin McDonagh

  Péter P. Müller

  Views:

  68

  Since the emergence of naturalism in the theatre in the last decades of the nineteenth century the reality of an action on the stage has been put into a new context. The previous tradition of performance characterized by artificial, schematic solutions in gestures and speaking was replaced by direct presentation. Performance pretended that real events were taking place in an artificial, stylized context; that is, within the framework of the theatre. The first part of the essay discusses the connection between theatre and violence, starting from a historical and philosophical context and arriving at an aesthetic perspective which regards violence as a challenge for the theatrical representation. The second part studies stage violence in the plays of Martin McDonagh with the primary example of The Lieutenant of Inishmore. The third part summarizes the Hungarian reception of The Lieutenant of Inishmore and compares two productions which handle the staging of natural and brutal scenes quite differently. As the whole play has a metatheatrical feature, confronting theatre with the general problem of theatrical representation, it is relevant to see how this challenge is handled by the productions reviewed. (PPM)

• Reading in the Dark, Sleeping with the Lights On: Uses and Abuses of Horror in Children’s Literature

  Anna Kérchy

  Views:

  194

  Book review:

  McCort, Jessica R., ed. Reading in the Dark. Horror in Children’s Literature and Culture. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2016. pp. 256. ISBN 978-1496806444. Hb. $56.99.

• Language and the Continental Congress: Language Policy Issues in the Founding Documents of the United States from 1774 to 1789

  Sándor Czeglédi

  Views:

  85

  Although neither the first nor the second constitution of the United States contains any references to the role of languages in the process of nation-building, a few language-related issues emerged from time to time during the early congressional debates and deliberations. These sporadic instances mostly framed the English language as a “pragmatic instrument” rather than a “national ideological symbol.” Consequently, no serious attempts were made either to officially adopt it as the majority language or to enhance its societal role and capacity in identity formation by legislative fiat. The apocryphal accounts of disestablishing English and installing, for example, French, German, or Latin as the de jure official language after the American Revolution probably belong to the realm of language policy myths. Drawing on key legislative documents during the critical years of the founding of the United States and employing language policy classification schemes based on the works of Anderson, Wiley, and Ruiz, the essay proposes a comprehensive overview of how, when, and in what contexts language-related references appeared. (SCz)

• Introduction

  Balázs Venkovits

  Views:

  83

  Introduction to the Special Thematic Block:

  Undesirables in the Last Best West? - Central and Eastern European Immigration to Canada

• The Female Gentleman and the Myth of Englishness in the Detective Novels of Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham

  Renáta Zsámba

  Views:

  423

  Golden Age detective fiction by women offers insights into the competing gender ideologies of the 1930s and early 1940s. The female protagonist these novels delineate is called “the female gentleman” by Melissa Schaub, who describes her as the detective’s equal based on her intellectual abilities and independence. Although the female gentleman seems a revolutionary figure as she is forward-looking in gender politics, her strong belief in class hierarchy, her Victorian morals and relationship with the gentleman detective relocate her in the heritage of the English pastoral. This essay focuses on the female gentleman as a bridge figure whose marriage to the detective not only restores him to his masculinity but also portrays the woman embedded in the pastoral idyll of the English landscape. Her decision to accept traditional femininity reinforces the female gentleman’s role in the recreation of the stability and security of pre-war England. (RZs)

• The Figure in the Carpet

  Pierre Lurbe

  Views:

  50

  Book review:

  Győri, Zsolt, and Gabriella Moise, eds. Travelling around Cultures: Collected Essays on Literature and Art. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2016. xii + 279 pages. ISBN 978-1-4438-0996-2. Hb. £52.99.