What makes the Discworld series so popular? This was what I set out to answer in my bachelor’s thesis which I wrote last year about Sir Terry Pratchett’s series of novels. In the thesis I argued that one of the key components behind the popularity of the books among critics and readers alike is their…
I have a reliable source (I have quite a few, actually) who can confidently state that apart from language practice seminars, department’s eves, constantly varying means of commuting and the great coat-hanger aka the statue of Pázmány Péter in Ambrosianum, what every one of us will remember are the Christmas parties held on the last…
As mentioned in my previous post, Yeats’s concept of the self and its anti-self (the mask) means that man is, in fact, two men. It also means that they belong to different fields of life, while being strongly connected to one another—the self is stuck in ordinary life, while the anti-self appertains to the fields of…
Video-link conference on Tuesday, November 25th, 2014 Interview with Michael McAteer This was the first ever video-conference at the Department. About twenty-something students, both from the MA and the BA, and also a few staff members turned up to spectate and enjoy this rare event, and even Fate and the rail workers at Pilisvörösvár were…
Over the last few months, I’ve been trying to find evidence to prove that Yeats’s idea of the self and its anti-self (the mask or Daimon) bears strong relation to Pirandello’s interpretation of the distinction between the so called persona and personaggio, and this analogy is most evident in their dramas. When Yeats writes to Olivia Shakespear…
It seems that pseudo castration as a form of disguise is a recurring motif in William Wycherley’s The Country Wife – or, at least, there are two remarkably similar cases in the play. In my last blog post, where I briefly reflected on how Margery Pinchwife’s cross-dressing can be regarded as an instance of “female…
What can it possibly mean within the context of a seventeenth-century English drama? This was my very first reaction when I came across the phrase “female castration” while looking through some material on William Wycherley’s The Country Wife. Although in my first post I promised to focus on the notion of writing and deception, the…
Hungarian Wikipedia is far behind its western counterparts, especially the English Wikipedia. Its articles are still few, often too short, and badly written, especially those written on topics, which are not directly linked to Hungarian culture, not to mention the numerous gaps in this nexus, the inexistent articles about topics that should be dealt with.It…
Mythologies of three women, usually with some magical properties, come in all shapes and sizes. One only has to think of the various manifestations of the myth in literature, such as the Weird Sisters in Macbeth, or classical divinities, such as the Fates or the Three Graces. What it usually common is that the three…