"Az igazság ismérve az, hogy igaz" : etika és nemzeti identitás Sütő András "Anyám könnyű álmot ígér" című művében és annak recepciójában

Abstract

The present work consists of three parts. The introduction outlines the basic ideas of narrative ethics and narrative identity theory, which serve as tools for the close reading of András Sütő s Anyám könnyű álmot ígér and its literary critical reception. The reasons for choosing these theories and the topics of ethics and national identity are also given here: the main argument is that, since both the analyzed literary work and its reception interweaves in a narrative form the question of moral principles with that of Hungarian identity, a narrative ethical approach on the construction of identity in the texts in question can be relevant. As far as the question of opting for revisiting a work that was published in 1970 is concerned, not only the book s huge public and critical success during communism and its relative popularity today, but also the essentialist way in which even nowadays literary critics writing about the book link being ethical with being Hungarian, shows that this dissertation has something to say to our times. The second part of the thesis is the analysis of the various attitudes the narrator and the characters have towards ethical questions related to that of national identity, as well as of the meanings such expressions as responsibility towards and holding on to (one s motherland, nation, values etc.) may have in Sütő s text. The final part sheds light on how the literary critics from 1970 till nowadays have interpreted and rearticulated the individual and collective (mainly national) identities of the author, the narrator and the characters of the analyzed literary work. The emphasis here is on the idealized image most critics have created about the writer, the book, as well as the nation and/or the national minority (the Hungarians of Romania) Sütő and Anyám könnyű álmot ígér supposedly stand for.