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)

adding that his "analysis of the family dynamics and his delineation of the playwright's 'concept of relative determinism' rank with the best." At the same time he makes a note of what is usually ignored in the majority of reviews, namely that the well researched contents of the book are "buttressed by extremely thorough notes" (86). Elidegenedés és drámaforma: Az amerikai álom társadalomtörténete és lélekrajz,a O'Neill drámaciklusában (Alienation and Dramatic Form: The Social History and Psychological Portrait of the American Dream in O'Neill Drama Cycle), Egri's third book on O'Neill published still in 1988, is a highly specialized work of scholarship. Focusing on A Tale of Possessors Self-Dispossessed

, the playwright's monumental cycle, it regards it as central to the oeuvre in highlighting the nature of O'Neill's experimentation to dramatize the tension between American dream and American reality. The introduction details the experience of alienation in the playwright's life, which gave him the impetus to begin the cycle. Yet A Tale of Possessors Self-Dispossessed remained incomplete, Egri argues, because the spatial, temporal and historical dimensions of the unfolding and ramifying concept spilled out of the dramatic form. In the bulk of the book three surviving plays of the cycle (originally planned to contain eleven parts) come under scrutiny. A Touch of the Poet is viewed as a play which integrates short story features, demonstrating affinity with Irish drama and its oral traditions on the one hand, and with the structural layout of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya on the other. Considering aspects of character and form. Egri contends that both O'Neill and Chekhov staged a double view of their respective "heroes," Melody and Vanya, resulting in tragicomedy. More Stately Mansions is treated under the title "Novel in the Drama," signalling how the play grew into the epic picture of a family's self-dispossession. From another angle, the analysis points out that the three main characters display features of split selves, deeply marked personal distortions, and also a wish to regain their autonomy by merging themselves with another personality. Finally, the unfinished play, The Calms of Capricon (whose 1983 Hungarian translation by Ágnes Gergely was its first ever rendering into another language, Egri informs his readers), appears in a chapter that sets it against various drama models preceding the work of O'Neill, highlighting thereby the heterogeneous 25