Summary and aims of the research for the public

Describe here the major aims of the research for an audience with average background information. This summary is especially important for NKFI in order to inform decision-makers, media, and the taxpayers.

Beginning with the 1840s, the platform for literary works’ first publications have predominantly been periodicals, weekly or daily press – only after this were they issued as printed books. Thus, periodicals not only affected the language, genre, and form of literary texts, but also the way in which contemporary readership and critics received them, and whether they became classics or not. This was the predominant model in most of continental Europe, whereas in Hungary, literature operates mostly in this way to the present day. There is no doubt anymore about the importance of periodicals in bringing literary texts to the readers, but a scholarly examination of the press that published and publishes literature have still not been undertaken. Our knowledge is still limited about some periodicals that played key roles in establishing the professional career of many a Hungarian author now deemed classic – from Vörösmarty, through Arany to Jókai and Móricz, and ”contemporary classics” – sometimes not only as platforms for publishing works, but as workshops or fertile artistic environments as well. Our aim is to compose an up-to-date „redefined handbook”, which would examine the effect that the press environment had on literary communication, reading, genres, and culture as a whole. This handbook would be of great service not only to future scholarly work, but to literary education as well.

Summary of the research and its aims for experts

Describe the major aims of the research for experts.

The goal is to uncover exactly how the radically transforming medial environment weighed its influence upon literary forms, the development of genres, and the processes of canonization. Beginning with the first half of the 19th century, book as a form lost its hegemony among printed media: first the periodicals and weeklies (or, in the reform period, fashion magazines) became dominant, then, towards the second half of the century, the importance of daily newspapers began to grow dinamically. This did not only mean that literary texts found their primary readership through periodicals, but also this process affected the system of literary genres and the formation of literary public as well. In Hungarian literature, periodicals still have a major priority above other media. From the beginning of the 21st century, digital media offered new possibilities for seriality, which again had an effect on the nature of press and literature. Our goal is to conduct the foundational scholarly research that is needed to get a sharp view on the networks of periodicals through which literary works could reach their readers in each age and era.

What is the major research question?

Describe here briefly the problem to be solved by the research, the starting hypothesis, and the questions addressed by the experiments.
The initial hypothesis of the research is that the press publicity, formed in the 19th century through the network of magazines, periodicals and newspapers, created a transmitter environment that, in the process of publishing a text, preceded the book form – hitherto the primary form of print literature. These phenomena had a serious effect on the language, parlance and questions of genre in belles-lettres; they defined the potential of the canon and critical feedback, the literary publicity, and the survival of particular oeuvres. These mechanisms and connections are marginal in the existing researches on press-history, without satisfying answers to the question: how does the periodic press influence the forms of literary communication in a time-period? Not even on the well-researched authors - such as Mór Jókai; Mihály Vörösmarty, or Zsigmond Móricz - do we have proper ground researches of the periodicals they once edited in the context of literary communication. The situation is very similar with the researches on the 20th century, although this period is very often named periodical literature. The planned ground-research does not aim to be a systematic „literary press-hitory”, but will be concerned with the correlation between literary forms and literary publicity, taking press as the primal printed transmitter of literature.

What is the significance of the research?

Describe the new perspectives opened by the achieved results, including the scientific basics of potential societal applications. Please describe the unique strengths of your proposal in comparison with your domestic and international competitors in the given field. The research will shed light upon the vast amount of material that lies outside of the works of canonized authors: from the daily press of the 19th century, to the underground publications from the second half of the 20th century, all genuine sources will be equally taken into consideration, and as a result, we may be able to offer a redefinition of Hungarian literature’s textual canon. We plan to publish the results and achievements of the four year-research in a “reinterpreted handbook” of sorts that will present a picture of the ever-changing relationship between literature and printed press in 19-20th century Hungary through case studies.