BiblioVault - Books about Hungary

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Biographical Writings

Louis Kaplan

Duke University Press, 1995

Marking the centenary of the birth of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946), this book offers a new approach to the Bauhaus artist and theorist’s multifaceted life and work—an approach that redefines the very idea of biographical writing.
In Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Louis Kaplan applies the Derridean deconstructivist model of the "signature effect" to an intellectual biography of a Constructivist artist. Inhabiting the borderline between life and work, the book demonstrates how the signature inscribed by "Moholy" operates in a double space, interweaving signified object and signifying matter, autobiography and auto-graphy. Through interpretative readings of over twenty key artistic and photographic works, Kaplan graphically illustrates Moholy’s signature effect in action. He shows how this effect plays itself out in the complex of relations between artistic originality and plagiarism, between authorial identity and anonymity, as well as in the problematic status of the work of art in the age of technical reproduction. In this way, the book reveals how Moholy’s artistic practice anticipates many of the issues of postmodernist debate and thus has particular relevance today. Consequently, Kaplan clarifies the relationship between avant-garde Constructivism and contemporary deconstruction.
This new and innovative configuration of biography catalyzed by the life writing of Moholy-Nagy will be of critical interest to artists and writers, literary theorists, and art historians.

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Latin Classics in Medieval Hungary

Eleventh Century

Elod Nemerkényi

Central European University Press, 2004

The first comprehensive study on the influence of Latin classical texts and traditions in medieval Hungary based on philological and historical analysis of eleventh century sources. The author proves that the Latin classics had a stronger impact on the formation of Latin literacy in medieval Hungary than it has been acknowledges before. The four chapters of the book (The Cathedral School, The Admonitions of King Saint Stephen of Hungary, The Deliberato of Bishop Saint Gerard of Csanad, The Monastic School) provide important contributions to the philological study of Medieval Latin and the classical tradition in medieval Central Europe.

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Limiting Government

An Introduction to Constitutionalism

András Sajó

Central European University Press, 1999

Until the previous decade, constitutionalism in Eastern Europe was considered to be an outmoded concept of the nineteenth century. Changes in the region, however, have brought back the fundamental question of the need to restrict government power through social self-binding.

This book discusses the mechanisms of such restriction, including different forms of the separation of powers and constitutional review. It relates the theoretical and practical importance of the issue to the present world-wide discontent with majoritarian democracy and the growing disrepute of parliaments. Increasing executive efficiency is, however, a threat to fundamental rights, and the battlecry of efficiency is often only a means to new despotism and inefficiency. A careful re-evaluation of the concept of constitutionalism assists in the search for a useful balance between majoritarianism and rights, and in the avoidance of all forms of public tyranny.

Written in non-technical language and using the most important English, American, French, and German examples of constitutional history, the book also examines East European (in particular, Russian) and Latin American examples, in part to illustrate certain dead-ends in constitutional development. It is intended to be an introduction for all those concerned with liberty.

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Literacy and Written Culture in Early Modern Central Europe

István György Tóth

Central European University Press, 2001

This unequalled volume’s key value is to place Hungary on the map of European literacy rates over the whole period between the initial stimuli of Renaissance and Reformation and the developed, state-organized educational systems of the (later) nineteenth century.

Suitable for academics across a wide range of subject areas, Tóth’s work is a broad international comparative analysis, concentrating on the long-term development of literacy rates and the use of written and oral culture in early modern societies. Tóth also examines the social history of elementary schools and its teachers, and book reading among peasants and noblemen throughout the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries in Hungary.

Literacy and Written Culture includes references to the development of libraries during the period and on the use of different languages – of particular importance is an examination of Latin usage. This volume is an extremely lively and stimulating guide providing fascinating insights into village life, legal and administrative issues and the role of the clergy. Its overall content contributes to major debates in the fields of language, literacy, linguistics and social history.

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A Little Hungarian Pornography

Peter Esterhazy

Northwestern University Press, 1997

An extraordinary montage of sex and politics, Péter Esterházy's innovative novel can be seen to prefigure the liberation of Eastern Europe. Written under what the author calls "small, Hungarian, pornographic circumstances," A Little Hungarian Pornography exists in a context of official falsehood and misinformation, of lies of the body, the soul, and the state, perpetuated in the duality of language.

In a state where the lack of democracy was called socialist democracy, economic chaos a socialist economy, and revolution an anti-revolution, the notion of speech and obscenity becomes equally distorted and skewed. Under these circumstances, the author considers the shackles inherent in the vocabulary of oppression and contrasts this with the freedom of the body in sex. A kaleidoscopic digression on perversion and politics, A Little Hungarian Pornography is both satire and critique, trifle and tract, and further support for Esterházy's status as one of the best writers in Europe today.

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