Urban Culture and the Modern City

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

Taken together, the chapters in this book provide a coherent overview of representations of the Hungarian city in literature, theater, and cinema. This book will act as an important future reference work for scholars working on the 20th and 21st century Hungarian city. And it reminds scholars unfamiliar with Hungarian urban culture of the vast range of urban phenomena that remain underrepresented in academic literature in English.Lieven Ameel, Tampere University

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction. The Modern City in Hungarian Culture: Translocal Interventions Ágnes Györke and Tamás JuhászPART I THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY: LITERATURE, PAINTING AND THE CITYChapter 1. ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’: Ferenc Molnár’s Budapest in Liliom and The Guardsman Márta PellérdiChapter 2. City in the Land: Nationalism, Technology and Celebrity Culture in Gyula Krúdy’s Primadonna Tamás JuhászChapter 3. Small-town Poetics: The Provincial Small Town as the Counterpoint of Metropolis in Dezső Kosztolányi’s Skylark Ágnes Klára PappChapter 4. ‘Métèques’ and the Central Powers of ‘Montparnasse’: Emil Szittya and the École de Paris Magdolna GucsaPART II PERSPECTIVES ON THE MID-CENTURY: PUBLIC ART AND THE NOVELChapter 5. Place, Space, Gender and Narrative Agency in Margit Kaffka’s Colours and Years (1911, 1912) and Magda Szabó’s The Fawn (1959) Éva FedermayerChapter 6. Told and Untold Histories of Oppression: Hungarian Romani Composer János Bihari’s Memory Sites in Budapest under State Socialism Árpád BakChapter 7. Small-town Civility and the Concept of Liberty in Géza Ottlik’s Opus Magnum Ferenc HörcherPART III REFLECTIONS ON THE CONTEMPORARY CITY: MATERIAL, LITERARY, AND VISUAL CULTURESChapter 8. Surface Matters: An Archaeology of the Arrow Cross in Budapest’s Façades László MunteánChapter 9. Budapest in Noémi Szécsi’s The Finno-Ugrian Vampire: The Grand and the Peripheral Ágnes GyörkeChapter 10. Three Postcards of Budapest: Paradigms of the Urban Imaginary in Post-communist Hungarian Cinema György KalmárChapter 11. Old City: Ageist Crime and Transgenerational Care in Kristóf Deák’s The Grandson (2022) Eszter UreczkyNotes on Contributors Index