This paper is about the importance of the Tiszaeszlár process (1882–83) in the different (political, public, and literary) discourses in connection with Károly Eötvös (1842–1916) and his works. The main thesis of my interpretation is that the Tiszaeszlár process is the most important component in the narrativization of Eötvös’s image, which (as a narrative abbreviation) shows spectacularly the most ideological and aesthetic problems of Eötvös’s writings and his legal, political and authoring career. My examination focuses on the ambivalent oppositions of moral success/financial gain, popularity/unpopularity and artform/ ideological content which are crucially represented and problematized in the literary reception and in Eötvös’s monumental book about the process (A nagy per… [e big process…], 1904).