Urban Culture and the Modern City

Hungarian urban culture in the 20th and the 21st centuries.

When consulting key works on urban studies, the absence of Central and Eastern European towns is striking. Cities such as Vienna, Budapest, Prague, and Trieste, where such notable figures as Freud, Ferenczi, Kafka, and Joyce lived and worked, are rarely studied in a translocal framework, as if Central and Eastern Europe were still a blind spot of European modernity. This volume expands the scope of literary urban studies by focusing on Budapest and Hungarian small towns, offering in-depth analyses of the intriguing link between literature, the arts, and material culture in the 20th and 21st centuries. The case studies situate Hungarian urban culture within the global flow of ideas as they explore the period of modernism, the mid-century, and the post-1989 era in a context that moves well beyond the borders of the country.

Contributors: Árpád Bak (University of Leeds), Éva Federmayer (Eötvös Loránd University), Magdolna Gucsa (Eötvös Loránd University / ÉHESS), Ágnes Györke (Károli Gáspár University), Ferenc Hörcher (Eötvös József Research Centre), Tamás Juhász (Károli Gáspár University), György Kalmár (University of Debrecen), László Munteán (Radboud University), Ágnes Klára Papp (Károli Gáspár University), Márta Pellérdi (Pázmány Péter Catholic University), Eszter Ureczky (University of Debrecen).

This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

This book will be made open access within three years of publication thanks to Path to Open, a program developed in partnership between JSTOR, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), University of Michigan Press, and The University of North Carolina Press to bring about equitable access and impact for the entire scholarly community, including authors, researchers, libraries, and university presses around the world. Learn more at https://about.jstor.org/path-to-open/

Listen to an interview with Ágnes Györke and Tamás Juhász at New Books Network: https://newbooksnetwork.com/urban-culture-and-the-modern-city

Acknowledgements

Introduction. The Modern City in Hungarian Culture: Translocal Interventions
Ágnes Györke and Tamás Juhász

PART I THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY: LITERATURE, PAINTING AND THE CITY

Chapter 1. ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’: Ferenc Molnár’s Budapest in Liliom and The Guardsman
Márta Pellérdi

Chapter 2. City in the Land: Nationalism, Technology and Celebrity Culture in Gyula Krúdy’s Primadonna
Tamás Juhász

Chapter 3. Small-town Poetics: The Provincial Small Town as the Counterpoint of Metropolis in Dezső Kosztolányi’s Skylark
Ágnes Klára Papp

Chapter 4. ‘Métèques’ and the Central Powers of ‘Montparnasse’: Emil Szittya and the École de Paris
Magdolna Gucsa

PART II PERSPECTIVES ON THE MID-CENTURY: PUBLIC ART AND THE NOVEL

Chapter 5. Place, Space, Gender and Narrative Agency in Margit Kaffka’s Colours and Years (1911, 1912) and Magda Szabó’s The Fawn (1959)
Éva Federmayer

Chapter 6. Told and Untold Histories of Oppression: Hungarian Romani Composer János Bihari’s Memory Sites in Budapest under State Socialism
Árpád Bak

Chapter 7. Small-town Civility and the Concept of Liberty in Géza Ottlik’s Opus Magnum
Ferenc Hörcher

PART III REFLECTIONS ON THE CONTEMPORARY CITY: MATERIAL, LITERARY, AND VISUAL CULTURES

Chapter 8. Surface Matters: An Archaeology of the Arrow Cross in Budapest’s Façades
László Munteán

Chapter 9. Budapest in Noémi Szécsi’s The Finno-Ugrian Vampire: The Grand and the Peripheral
Ágnes Györke

Chapter 10. Three Postcards of Budapest: Paradigms of the Urban Imaginary in Post-communist Hungarian Cinema
György Kalmár

Chapter 11. Old City: Ageist Crime and Transgenerational Care in Kristóf Deák’s The Grandson (2022)
Eszter Ureczky

Notes on Contributors
Index

Ágnes Györke

Ágnes Györke is associate professor at Károli Gáspár University’s Department of Literary and Cultural Studies in English and principal investigator of the Cosmopolitan Ethics and the Modern City research group.

Tamás Juhász

Tamás Juhász is associate professor at Károli Gáspár University where he teaches modern British and American literature, cultural theory and Central European film.