Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 8. Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 28)

Studies - Mária Kurdi: "Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain." On the Scholarly Heritage of Péter Egri (1932-2002)

MÁRIA KURDI "HOLD LIKE RICH GARNERS THE FULL-RIPEN'D GRAIN" ON THE SCHOLARLY HERITAGE OF PÉTER EGRI (1932-2002) Introduction The late Professor Péter Egri's contribution to literary scholarship, laid down in sixteen books, some edited volumes and nearly three hundred studies and shorter writings published in Hungary and in several other countries, defies convenient categorization. He belonged to the by our time fast decreasing number of scholars whose range of interests proved to be extremely wide and far-reaching, embracing aspects of Hungarian, English, American, Irish, French, German, Russian, Norwegian and Spanish literature, genre theory, music, painting and sculpture. Therefore, Egri was both an Anglicist and an Americanist, and even more: "scholar of comparative literary and cultural studies" appears to be the most appropriate description of his status in view of the scope of his achievement. The opening of his career as literary historian and critic already demonstrated this variety: after he completed his university doctor's degree dissertation on the poetry of Attila József in 1959, in the following years up to 1966 he probed into the works of writers as diverse as Mark Twain, Aldous Huxley, Henrik Ibsen, G. B. Shaw, James Joyce, Tibor Déry, and Anton P. Chekhov in articles which appeared in journals and collections. 1967 saw the publication of his first two books, on notably different subjects. One under the title Hemingway is a slender volume which surveys the fiction of the American writer with a special focus on the genetic and generic connections between the 13