The AnaChronist 1996 [antikvár]

Judit Friedrich Postmodemism in Hungary The example of Péter Esterházy - against the background of analysing John Earth's later fiction Like many of my Hungarian colleagues, I ventured into the territory of Hungarian literature only v^^hen I felt comfortable in discussing foreign, in my case mostly English and American literary works. Since the study of literature in Hungary has traditionally been political in its orientation, it seemed to many of us that a more disinterested, more detached, and more aesthetically oriented, if not objective, approach to literature is more likely to be developed in a neutral territory, and then it can be applied to our own literature. This paper, therefore, is comparative primarily in the sense that a Hungarian critic educated in Hungary in the Anglo-American tradition will discuss a Hungarian work. The work in question is The Book of Hrabal by Péter Esterhá2y, arguably the leading postmodernist author in contemporary Hungarian literature. Since most of my recent work, however, has focused on the American John Barth and the special brand of postmodemism present in his works of the past two decades, I approach Esterházy with the assumptions and tools developed while analysing works by Barth. The second level of comparativeness is, therefore, the transplantation of literary trends and analytical frameworks from an English speaking, mostly American, context to a Hungarian one. A complementary level of comparativeness will be added by the fact that I will discuss Esterházy's work in its translation into English, and while my original analysis of the work was done in Hungarian, certain features change their significance in translation.