In my book, I have attempted the elaboration of a system for rereading
20th-century Hungarian autobiographies, by way of
putting the emphasis on theoretical considerations. (From the
“Death of the Author” to the Resurrection of the Author,
Stereotypes in Autobiographical Reading) The major analytical
aspects of the Autobiographical Reading focuses on the language
based means of the representation of the Self. (Language and
Subject, Staging the Self, Inter-Replacing Play of Image and
Representation, Relationship between the Narrating and the
Narrated Autobiographical Self, Memory and Identity) The choice
of this subject matter is justified first of all by the fact that the
conditions for the interpretation of autobiographical texts of
belletristic value went through a fundamental change at the turn of
the millennium. This development was due partly to the
deliberating of language and subject aspectual insights prompted
by a turn in interpretation possibilities in literar
y scholarship, and
partly to the postmodern rewriting of the self-interpreting genre.
In this context, it is the destruction and re-creation of binary
concepts related to the genre that prescribes the aspectual
framework for the reading of autobiographies. The legitimacy of the
contraposition in literary works between the factual and the
fictitious, between recollection and imagination, between
denominations and the denominated, between language and reality,
between image and representation, and between the intratextual
and extratextual worlds has become questionable.
The theoretical insights of the meaning of autobiography serve,
in this book, as the starting point for the analysis of
autobiographical texts. I will focus upon four paradigmatic
personality constructions of Hungarian autobiography in the 20th
century. The choice of Zsigmond Móricz, Gyula Illyés, Sándor
Márai and László Németh as examples is due to the fact, that their
works are representatives, but since their rhetorical strategies are
quite different, make them particularly resistant to a reading that
not follows the stereotypes in interpretations of autobiographical
6 works, I could argue, that the analytical aspects of my reading
approach would be true for adhere writers.
I wrote the main part of the book during the period when I was
invited as a visiting professor at the University of Jyväskylä by
Prof. Lahdelma Tuomo. I wish to thank his support and I’m indebted to Gergely Dusnoki and Kristóf Fenyvesi for copyediting
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