University of Szeged - Where knowledge and challenge meet

The School was founded in 1994, by Professor Lajos Csetri, Department of Classical Hungarian Literature. Integrating contemporary Hungarian and international trends, Professor Csetri erected the School on the finest traditions of literary scholarship in Szeged. The diverse theoretical traditions have been engaded in a productive cooperation within the organisational framework of the School ever since.

Part of the programmes concentrate on traditional forms of textual scholarship, the exploration, recovery and publication of unknown or hitherto unavailable texts of Hungarian and European literatures. The significance of these projects is underlined by historical conditions: Hungarian literary and cultural historical scholarship had been unable to fully explore earlier literary sources by the early 20th century, and the collections suddenly outside the new Hungarian borders established by the Trianon Peace Treaty became unavailable for further research. Moreover, the reinterpretation of the romantic notions of national literature and the recognition of texts written in languages other than Hungarian as also constitutive of Hungarian literature have enormously facilitated the research of texts produced in Latin in the 15–18th centuries.

Scholars in Szeged engaged in textual scholarship have been constantly aware of issues posed by literary theory. Workshops of vast importance have been formed here constantly since the early 1960s, at first with commitment to linguistics and/or semiotics. By today concerns of most poststructuralist movements have also been integrated into their conceptual frameworks. As a result, numerous original works have been published, gaining international recognition. The majority of definitive works of theory have been published in Hungarian translation as well.

In line with the School’s versatile character, most of the major branches of modern philology have also created workshops – with the lamentable exception of Hispanic literatures – and each workshop integrates approaches of literary history and/or theory to varying degrees. The School now has programmes in British and American literatures and cultures, German, French, Italian, Russian literatures and Comparative Literature, the latter covering the literatures of neighbouring nations (Polish, Czech, Serbian, Croatian and Romanian) as well.

The School pursues a high level of thematic and methodological diversity, yet at the same time, Professor Csetri and the ensuing directors (coordinators) have maintained an active dialogue among the programmes. An important framework of this dialogue is the ongoing series of methodology workshops held by prominent representatives of Hungarian and international literary scholarship.

 

Chair: Prof. Mihály Balázs DSc Institute for Hungarian Literature and Linguistics, Department of Old Hungarian Literature H–6722 Szeged, Egyetem u. 2., Hungary Phone/Fax: (+36 62) 544 365 E-mail: rotonde@freemail.hu   Assistant Chair: Prof. Olga Penke DSc Institute for Neo-Latin Cultures, Department of French Linguistics and Literature H–6720 Szeged, Egyetem u. 2., Hungary Phone: (+36 62) 544 237 E-mail: polga@lit.u-szeged.hu

 

Educational Programmes

British and American Literatures and Cultures

 

Programme director: Prof. Endre György Szőnyi DSc

Institute of English and American Studies, Department of American Studies

H–6722 Szeged, Egyetem u. 2., Hungary

Phone: (+36 62) 544 030, Fax: (+36 62) 544 259

E-mail: geszonyi@lit.u-szeged.hu 

 

Research topics

– Protomodern and postmodern cultural representations in anglophone literatures and cultures, and their comparative study ( Supervisors: Attila Kiss, György Endre Szőnyi)

– Mediality and semiography: theories and case studies in verbal and visual cultural representations (Supervisors: Attila Kiss, György Endre Szőnyi)

– Intercultural, intermedial and intertextual approaches to analyses in literary history (Supervisors: Éva Federmayer, Ágnes Zsófia Kovács, György Novák, Béláné Resch)

– Imagination, heterodoxy, occultism and the fantastic in Anglo-Saxon culture (from the 16th to the 21st century) (Supervisor: György Endre Szőnyi)

– English intellectual and cultural history (Supervisor: György Endre Szőnyi)

– Gender studies (Supervisors: Béláné Resch, Erzsébet Barát, Éva Federmayer, Irén Annus)

– American intellectual and cultural history (Supervisors: Irén Annus, Zoltán Vajda, György Novák)

– American film, visuality; film theory (Supervisor: Réka Mónika Cristián)

– Modern American drama (Supervisor: Réka Mónika Cristián)

– Postcolonial theories (Supervisors: Réka Mónika Cristián, Éva Federmayer)

– Visual culture in the United States (Supervisor: Irén Annus)

 

Classical Hungarian Literature

 

Programme director: Prof. Mihály Szajbély DSc

Institute of Hungarian Linguistics and Literature, Department of Classical Hungarian Literature

H–6722 Szeged, Egyetem u. 2., Hungary

Phone/Fax: (+36 62) 544 366; (+36 62) 544 365

E-mail: szajbely@hung.u-szeged.hu 

 

Research topics

– Generic issues in classical Hungarian literature (Supervisor: Mária Zentai)

– Grand oeuvres in classical Hungarian literature (Supervisor: Mária Zentai)

– Literary canonisation and recanonisation in classical Hungarian literature (Supervisor: Mária Zentai)

– Individual and collective identity formation and literary outlook in classical Hungarian literature (Supervisor: Mária Zentai)

– Multilingualism: Non-Hungarophone cultural representations in 18th and 19th century Hungary (literature, theatre, science, journalism, etc.) (Supervisor: Katalin Hász-Fehér)

– The history of the formation of myths in classical Hungarian literature (Supervisor: Katalin Hász-Fehér)

– Publishing theory of and textology in classical Hungarian literature (Supervisor: Katalin Hász-Fehér)

– Literary, cultural and national outlooks in the correspondence, diary and memory writing of classical Hungarian literature (Supervisor: Katalin Hász-Fehér)

– The realisation of critical editions from the corpus of classical Hungarian literature (Supervisor: Mihály Szajbély)

– History of criticism in the classical period of Hungarian literature (Supervisor: Mihály Szajbély)

Literature and its sister arts in the classical period of Hungarian literature (Supervisor: Mihály Szajbély)

– History of institutions in the period of literature’s transformation into an autonomous subsystem (Supervisor: Mihály Szajbély)

– The history of literary media in the classical period of Hungarian literature (Supervisor: Mihály Szajbély)

– Contexts of popular fiction: cultural history and the history of techniques (Supervisor: Gergely Labádi)

 

 

Comparative Literature

 

Programme director: Prof. István Fried DSc

Institute for Hungarian Literature and Linguistics, Department of Comparative Literature

H–6722 Szeged, Egyetem u. 2., Hungary

Phone: (+36 62) 544 520, Fax: (+36 62) 425 843

 

Research topics

–  Significant figures of comparative literature in Hungarian and international literary criticism (Supervisors: István Fried, György Fogarasi)

– Culture as text (Supervisors: István Fried, György Fogarasi)

– Intercultural hermeneutics (Supervisors: István Fried, György Fogarasi)

– Orality, writing, mnemotechniques (Supervisors: István Fried, György Fogarasi)

– Cultural memory (Supervisors: István Fried, György Fogarasi)

– Literature and its sister arts (Supervisors: István Fried, Katalin Kürtösi)

– Regional problems (Supervisors: István Fried, Katalin Kürtösi)

– Literary criticism and fellow disciplines (Supervisors: István Fried, Katalin Kürtösi, György Fogarasi)

 

 

French Literature

 

Programme director: Prof. Olga Penke DSc

Institute for Neo-Latin Cultures, Department of French Linguistics and Literature

H–6722 Szeged, Egyetem u. 2., Hungary

Phone: (+36 62) 544 237

E-mail: polga@lit.u-szeged.hu 

 

Research topics

– Research in genre theory and genre history: transformations of short prose genres, the autobiography, the memoir and the novel, historiography, the travelogue, and their fellow genres (Supervisors: Ilona Kovács, Olga Penke, Géza Szász

– Natural and social philosophy in 17th and 19th century French literature (Supervisor: Péter Balázs)

– Hungarian-French intellectual and literary connections: investigations in reception (Supervisors: Olga Penke, Géza Szász)

– French literary theory and aesthetics (Supervisors: Tímea Gyimesi, Katalin Kovács)

 

 

Italian Literature

 

Programme director: Prof. József Pál DSc

Institute for Neo-Latin Cultures, Department of Italian Studies

H–6722 Szeged, Petőfi Sándor sgt. 30–34., Hungary

Phone: (+36 62) 544 038

E-mail: paljzsf@lit.u-szeged.hu 

 

Research topics

– The Italian literary Middle Ages in a theological context. The poetics of Dante Alighieri (Supervisor: József Pál)

– Italian Renaissance: literature and visual arts (Supervisor: József Pál)

– The Baroque (Supervisor: József Pál)

– Italian Neoclassicism in Its European Contexts (Supervisor: József Pál)

– 20th century Italian literature (Supervisors: József Pál, Klára Madarász)

– Italian Renaissance and Baroque literature and literary Theory (Supervisor: Éva Vígh)

– 16th–17th century Italian cultural history (Supervisor: Éva Vígh)

 

Literary Theory

 

Programme director: Prof. Ferenc Odorics DSc

Institute for Hungarian Literature and Linguistics, Department of Comparative Literature

H–6722 Szeged, Egyetem u. 2., Hungary

Phone/Fax: (+36 62) 544 387

E-mail: odorics@hung.szeged.hu 

 

Research topics

– Narratology in the 20th century (Supervisor: Ervin Török)

– Old and new rhetoric (Supervisor: Ferenc Odorics)

– Semiotics and literary studies (Supervisor: Ferenc Odorics)

– Philosophy of science and literary theory (Supervisor: Ferenc Odorics)

– The borderlines of verbality and visuality (Supervisor: Izabella Füzi)

 

Literatures in German

 

Programme director: Prof. Árpád Bernáth CSc

Institute of German Studies, Department of German Literature

H–6722 Szeged, Egyetem u. 2., Hungary

Phone: (+36 62) 544 247; Fax: (+36 62) 544 245

E-mail: bernath.a@lit.u-szeged.hu 

 

Research topics

– Literary theory, the poetics of possible worlds / textology (editionsphilologie) (Supervisor: Árpád Bernáth)

– Literature in the age of Goethe, Weimar Classicism (Supervisor: Árpád Bernáth)

– German literature and philosophy, history of poetics (e.g. artistic and literary theories of the German Romanticism, etc.) (Supervisor: Géza Horváth)

– Significant figures in the 20th–21st century literature of Germany and Switzerland (Supervisor: Géza Horváth)

– Mediaeval and early modern German literature (Supervisor: Tünde Katona)

– The 16th–17th century intellectual history of the German culture in Hungary (Supervisor: Tünde Katona)

– Culture, mediality and literature in the 18th Century (Supervisor: Endre Hárs)

– The literature of German Romanticism, Vormärz and poetic realism (Supervisor: Márta Barótiné Gaál)

– The literature of German Expressionism at the turn of the 19th–20th century (Supervisor: Károly Csúri)

– Significant figures of 20th–21st century Austrian narrative literature (Supervisor: Attila Bombitz)

 

 

Literatures of Classical Antiquity

 

Programme director: Assoc. Prof. János Nagyillés CSc

Institute for Archaic and Oriental Studies, Department of Classica-Philology

H–6722 Szeged, Egyetem u. 2., Hungary

Phone/ Fax: (+36 62) 544 313

E-mail: nagyilles@gmail.com

 

Research topics

– The Interpretation of Ovid’s exile-elegies from a narrative psychological perspective (Supervisor: Ibolya Tar)

– Greek and Roman historiography (with specific focus on the historiography surrounding the figure of Alexandros) (Supervisor: Ibolya Tar)

– Investigations in the hermetic tradition (with specific focus on questions of dating, its relationship to Platonism and its survival in the Christian tradition) (Supervisor: Ibolya Tar)

– The influence of Greek tragedies on Seneca’s works (with specific focus on the structural role of the chorus) (Supervisor: Ibolya Tar)

– The survival of Greek literary traditions in Archaic, Golden Age, Silver Age and - Late Imperial Roman literature (Supervisor: Ibolya Tar)

– The representation of Roman values in the fine arts and their use for propagandistic purposes (Supervisor: Ibolya Tar)

– Roman epic of the Silver Age: intertextual investigations (Supervisor: János Nagyillés)

 

 

Modern Hungarian Literature

 

Programme director: Prof. Sándor Olasz DSc 

Institute of Hungarian Linguistics and Literature, Department of Modern Hungarian Literature

H–6722 Szeged, Egyetem u. 2., Hungary

Phone/Fax: (+36 62) 544 365

E-mail: olasz@hung.u-szeged.hu 

 

Research topics

– >Poetic variants in contemporary Hungarian prose (Supervisor: Sándor Olasz)

– The metamorphosis of the short story and the novel in the Hungarian literature of the first half of the 20th century (Supervisor: Sándor Olasz)

– Dialogic and monologic variants of poetics in 20th century Hungarian poetry (Supervisor: Zoltán Virág)

– Linguistic-poetic attitudes in the Hungarian poetry of the second half of the 20th century (Supervisor: Zoltán Virág)

– Foreign Hungarian literature, minority literatures, Southern Slavic-Hungarian literary connections (Supervisor: Zoltán Virág)

– The poetic characteristics of postmodern Hungarian prose (Supervisor: Gábor Szabó)

– Foreign Hungarian literature (Supervisors: Sándor Olasz, Zoltán Virág)

 

 

Neo-Latin Literature

 

Programme director: Prof. László Szörényi DSc

Institute for Hungarian Literature and Linguistics, Department of Comparative Literature

H–6722 Szeged, Petőfi Sándor sgt. 30–34., Hungary

Phone/Fax: (+36 62) 544 633

E-mail: neolatin@hung.u-szeged.hu 

 

Research topics

– Neo-Latin epic poetry (Supervisor: László Szörényi)

– Theory of poetics and rhetoric (Supervisor: László Szörényi)

– The Renaissance and early modern Latin scholarship (Supervisor: László Szörényi)

– Erasmus of Rotterdam and His reception in Hungary (Supervisor: László Szörényi)

– Humanist history writing (16th–17th century Hungarian Historiographers and Historiographers related to Hungary) (Supervisor: István Dávid Lázár)

– The Latin works of Petrarca – reception, history (Supervisor: István Dávid Lázár)

– Theory of history (ars historica in the Renaissance and the Early Modern era) (Supervisor: István Dávid Lázár)

 

 

Old Hungarian Literature

Programme director: Prof. Mihály Balázs DSc

Institute for Hungarian Literature and Linguistics, Department of Old Hungarian Literature

H–6722 Szeged, Egyetem u. 2., Hungary

Phone/Fax: (+36 62) 544 365

E-mail: rotonde@freemail.hu 

 

Research topics

– Denominations and literary movements in early modern Hungary and Transylvania (Supervisor: Mihály Balázs)

– Cultural institutions and literary programmess under the aegis of the Reformation (Supervisors: Mihály Balázs, Miklós Latzkovits)

– Intellectual and generic tendencies in late Renaissance Hungary (Supervisor: Péter Ötvös)

– Theme and variation in 17th century Hungarian poetry (Supervisor: Péter Ötvös)

– Non-Hungarian literature in the 17th Century (Supervisor: Péter Ötvös)

– Domestic and foreign schooling (peregrinatio academica) and 16th–18th century – Hungarian literature (Supervisor: Zsuzsa Font)

– Paratexts in old Hungarian poetry (Supervisor: László Szilasi)

– Combinatorics and the concepts of poetry in 17th century Hungarian poetry (Supervisor: László Szilasi)

– Imitatio, aemulatio, and applicatio in 17th century Hungarian poetry (Supervisor: László Szilasi)

 

 

Russian literature

 

Programme director: Assoc. Prof. Katalin Szőke CSc

Institute of Slavic Philology, Department of Russian Language and Literature

H–6722 Szeged, Egyetem u. 2., Hungary

Phone/Fax: (+36 62) 544 160

E-mail: kszoke@lit.u-szeged.hu 

 

Research topics

– Functions of the icon (Supervisor: Valerij Lepahin)

– The icon and Russian literature (Supervisor: Valerij Lepahin)

– The Religio-philosophical foundations of Gogol’s St. Petersburg Stories (Supervisor: Katalin Szőke)

–  The Subcultural Metatext of Russian Symbolist Prose (Supervisor: Katalin Szőke)

– The “female principle” in early 20th century Russian literature (Supervisor: Katalin Szőke)

– Trends in Contemporary Russian Prose (Supervisor: Katalin Szőke)

The Utopian idea in the literature of Russian Symbolism / Avant-garde (Supervisor: Ibolya Bagi)

– The failure of Utopian Ideas: The Oeuvre of Andrej Platonov (Supervisor: Ibolya Bagi)

– Rusyn-Hungarian literary connections in the light of translation literature (Supervisor: Ibolya Bagi)