AZ ELMÉLETI ÉSZ MEGÉRTÉSI ESÉLYEI (IRODALOMÉRTÉS, IRODALMI TEÓRIA, „NAGY ELMÉLETI BUMM”)
THEORY, LITERARY THEORY, “BIG THEORETICAL BANG”

Author(s): Balázs Nyilasy
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Theory of Literature
Published by: Scientia Kiadó
Keywords: theory; understanding; literary criticism;
Summary/Abstract: In the past decades, Hungarian critics, researchers, teachers acting in the universe of literature have learned to respect Theory.In the academic world and in elite criticism, theoretical reason has gained substantive importance, poststructuralist catechism has guided understanding as an indispensable guide, and it has seemed self-evident that the path to authentic literary understanding leads through theory.Under these circumstances, a multi-perspective, reflective examination of theory and an account of its problematic aspects have not taken place.Yet, a similar debate had already taken place in American literary studies in the 1980s, and György Poszler’s 1988 monograph sharply criticized Hegel’s and György Lukács’s philosophical aesthetics.(Conservative philosophers Edmund Burke, Tamás Molnár, Roger Scruton, and others are also distrustful of system creation and consider as problematic those attitudes of thought that “can only accept answers formulated within the framework of an elaborate system.”) It is also timely to open a debate on the validity of understanding the “Big Theoretical Bang”.All the more so because several internationally renowned European and American philosophers, linguists, and literary scholars (René Wellek, M.H.Abrams, Tzvetan Todorov, John Searle, Geoffrey Galt Harpham, Roy Harris, Martha Nussbaum) have contributed comprehensive perspectives to criticism.The lecture will first build on their well-established critical perspectives, then will also discuss the spread of poststructuralism in Hungary, and finally, reflecting on the raison d’être of Theory and literary theory, it will evoke endeavours of literary theory which seek to preserve moderation and prudence as fundamental values, to avoid substantive fixations, to transcend one-sided confrontations and strive for a verifying criticism of concepts, while they attempt at unifying deduction with induction, and regard the task, function, and vocation of theory as assisting the understanding of literature.

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