The possibilities of a transcultural narrative in 19th-century Central Europe: Ján Chalupka and Gusztáv Szontagh
The possibilities of a transcultural narrative in 19th-century Central Europe: Ján Chalupka and Gusztáv Szontagh

Summary/Abstract: Simultaneously with the disintegration of the concept of the Hungarian nation (natio hungarica), which was considered to be valid up to the 19th century, the process of creating parallel, self-enclosing literary canons that promoted homogeneous monolingualism began in the Kingdom of Hungary. The dialogue of enclosed spaces built on the opposition of “the self” and “the foreign” evokes, in particular, the need to highlight elements of otherness and becomes a source of conflict. Although the term “transculturality” is largely used to describe the culture of the 21st century, it also appears a suitable tool for overcoming some of the language-related barriers to reception (overcoming the limits of the original reception horizon) in the environment of Slovak-Hungarian/Hungarian-Slovak literary/cultural relations of the 19th century. The study (using examples of texts from the Slovak author Ján Chalupka and a one-act play by the Hungarian author Gusztáv Szontagh) explores the intersections and interpenetrations of texts and contexts of the first half of the 19th century, considered as reciprocally “foreign”. Its conclusions draw attention to the fact that the transcultural perspective is of importance in determining the nature of the dialogue/relationship of the national literatures of the Kingdom of Hungary. This makes it possible to uncover contexts and to identify those nodal points of discourses that are invisible in the monolingual, homogeneous spaces of reciprocally isolated national canons.

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