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Further Reading

Péter Hajdu: Historical Novel - Tradition and Anxiety


Speaker: Péter Hajdu (University of Pécs, Hungary)

Date: December 29, 2014 – Monday

Time: 13:30

Venue: R126, Bld5, Songjiang Campus

Language: English

 

Summary: Historical novels make up a strange genre that challenges post-modern literary theories about fictionality and possible worlds. Even if we read them intertextually, i.e. in comparison with non-fictional texts, namely historical sources or historiography, it is hard to get rid of the impression that they try to tell what really happened. Post-modern metafiction tried to drastically deconstruct such ideas, which makes us inclined to read older (not post-modern) historical novels also as theoretical essays on historicity. It is obvious that historical novels are less about the past than the present, but it is hardly a too daring hypothesis that in ages of anxiety the interest in the past usually grows. The boom of historical television series show a delicate balance of necessary anachronism and defamiliarization, which makes the audience face the radical otherness of the past. 

 

Speaker Biography: Péter Hajdu (1966, Budapest, Hungary) is academic advisor at the Institute for Literary Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, also professor at University of Pécs, Hungary, and the managing editor of Neohelicon, a major international journal on comparative literature studies. Member of advisory board of two international journals on literary studies. He did extended research in the fields of comparative literature, theory of literature, and classical philology. From 2002 to 2009 he was a member of the ICLA’s Research Committee for East- and South-East Europe, between 2002 and 2012 he was the secretary of its Hungarian National Committee, 2008-2014 he was member of the standing research committee for literary theory, and since 2010 member of the ICLA Executive Council. He lectured at various universities in Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, China and Japan. He has published 6 books and more than 100 papers.

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Further Reading