Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1982 (10. évfolyam, 31-34. szám)
1982 / 34. szám
Viennese Nunciature comprising in its 228 volumes, reports, letters, requests, and dispatches addressed to Vienna from Hungary during the period when Hungary had no direct access to Rome and her sovereignty was curtailed. The author says that the documents under discussion do not “Call for a basic revision of the views we had formed on the given period of Hungary’s historical development”, but allows to see it from the special angle of the Roman Curia. “The fact that the nuncios looked at Hungarian events from the Viennese angle and were witnesses, passive or active participants of our history in a very difficult period is by itself noteworthy." Örkény, István. THE FLOWER SHOW, [and] THE TÓTH FAMILY. New Directions Books, 80 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10011, 1982. 163 pages. $14.95 cloth; $6.95 paper. Introduction to the volume and translation of The Flower Show by Michael Henry Heim; translation of The Tóth Family by Clara Gyorgyey. The Rózsa kiállítás (1977) and the Tóthék (1967) are two novellas which have been translated into English for the first time. Örkény (1912-1979) was one of the most successful Hungarian playrights of the past two decades. He was a prolific writer of novels, some of which served as the basis for his plays, and of a genre of his own invention: the “oneminute story.” Two of his plays translated into English had successful runs throughout the theaters of Europe and America and had made into equally successful films (Catsplay and The Tóth Family). The Flower Show was his last novel as well as his most widely translated work. In it he exploits the universal unease in the faceofdeath. In The Tóth Family, a village fire chief and his family are terrorized by a psychotic army officer. Sólyom-Fekete, Dr. William. THE LEGAL EFFECTS OF A REVOLUTION. Hungary’s Legal History: November 1956 - November 1958, 1982. Law Library, Library of Congress, Washington, DC 20540. 134 + 25 pages. Free upon request, paper. The events of 1956 have disrupted legal order in a dramatic way, yet, few systematic studies have been devoted to the process of legal change during the uprising and even fewer to the restoration of legal order after the conclusion of the abortive revolution. The study focuses on legal measures introduced after November4,1956butgivesfairtreatmentto antecedents in the framework of accepted legal specializations, such as international law, constitutional law, civil law, administrative law, labor law, and in such areas as economics, agriculture, education, and jurisprudence. A chronology of events between February 14 and November 3, 1956 is included in the appendix. The author concludes that those in power during and after the revolution introduced legal measures (legally or illegally) which assisted them in consolidating their political gains. Some of the legal actions were intended as temporary measures to be abolished or changed again once a government was firmly established. E.g., the Kádár government first retained the revolutionary councils and committees clipping them of some power, then, about a year later, abolished them altogether. However, many legal measures adopted during the immediate postrevolutionary period originated in the revolution and were to appease the restive population. Many of those remain in force to date and could be considered as positive consequences of the upheaval. The author is a senior legal specialist at the European Law Division, Law Library, Library of Congress. DISSERTATIONS* Horvath, Julia (U. of California, Los Angeles, 1981) Aspects of Hungarian Syntax and the Theory of Grammar. 330 pages. Microfilm and xerox no. DA8206029. The study is conducted within the general framework of the “Revised Extended Standard Theory” (REST) of generative grammar, and it compares and assesses particular versions of this framework, based on the analyses constructed. The fundamental issue addressed is how the superficially wide and arbitrary range of differences between Hungarian and Indo-European languages can be reduced to the effects of a minimal number of parameters left open in Universal Grammar (UG). The results support the conception of UG as a modular system, made-up of autonomous subcomponents of rules and sub-systems of principles, and provide empirical evidence for a highly restrictive formulation of several sub-components of UG. Chapter 1 provides a basic sketch of Hungarian phrase structure. It is argued that the landing sites of Wh-phrases in interrogative vs. in relative constructions are systematically distinct. Chapters 3 and 4 investigate the nature of the movement processes involved in the Wh-question and FOCUS construction of Hungarian. Larson, John William (Rutgers U. 1977) A Changing Definition of Patrol Leadership as an Integral Part of the Program of the Boy Scouts of America. 271 pages. Microfilm and xerox no. 77-27, 971. The study examines the leadership orientations and the process of social change which occurred in the Boy Scouts of America between 1913and 1975. Three leadership orientations: trait, situational, and functional provide the theoretical guidance for the study of patrol leadership as described in the official handbooks and in the fiction of Boy’s Life, the official Boy Scouts magazine. Observations on the process of social change in Scouting literature are made within the context of the writings of Talcott Parsons. Hungarianists might be interested in the dissertation as a critic of the White Stag program which a handful of former Hungarian Boy Scouts infused into the training system of the Boy Scouts of America. See HSN no. 25, p. 7. Pauley, Douglas Ronald (Indiana U., 1980) German Loan Translations in Estonian, Finnish, and Hungarian. 275 pages. Microfilm and xerox order no. 8020248. This is a study on German loan translations in three Uralic languages. A loan translation is a word which one language, using indigenous roots and affixes, creates by translating the component parts of a word in another language. E g., Hungarian szájhős “braggart” (száj “mouth” and hó's “hero”) is a component-by-component translation of German Maulheld (Maul “mouth” and Held"hero”). The study includes an explanation of the distinguishing features of loanwords and loan translations, an overview of loan-translation types, and a discussion of the problems of source language vs. recipient language in loan-translation research. The role of Gqrmanspeaking peoples in Estonian and Hungarian history is (Continued on Page 4) ‘Abstracts are usually based on those published in Dissertation Abstracts International. Microfilm and xerox copies of the original full dissertation may be obtained, when indicated, from Xerox University Microfilm 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106. When ordering, use the number shown. NO. 34, WINTER 1982-83, HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER 3
