Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2001. [Vol. 7.] Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 27)

Book review - Péter Egri: Vadon, Lehel. Az amerikai irodalom és irodalomtudomány bibliográfiája a magyar időszaki kiadványokban 1990-ig [A Bibliography of American Literature and Literary Scholarship in Hungarian Periodicals till 1900]

that focus on American literature in a general sense and not on individual authors or their works. Texts on particular authors were also accommodated in the general section only if this was justified by the nature of the texts, that is, mainly in those cases when their themes also pertain to more general issues" (39). The multifaceted comprehensiveness of the general bibliography is manifest in its various subcategories: prose, poetry, drama, theater, literary history, literary theory, criticisms, Hungarian-American links, reception, comparative studies, bibliography, publishing, press, book reviews on literary anthologies in Hungarian, and finally, miscellaneous writing not readily classifiable in the other categories. In subsequent editions it might be expedient to streamline the terminology and to use "epic genre" instead of prose, "lyric genre" instead of poetry because drama, as dictated by the logic of the tripartite breakdown, appears as the third dominant generic class, and the majority used by other authors, it still seems expedient to avoid unnecessary overlaps and abrupt shifts in generic focus. Omnis determinatio est negatio. It also appears useful to ponder whether or not the more general classes (bibliographies, literary theory) should be given more priority and be moved higher in the list. The concluding part of the volume is an appendix (941-1076), which provides alphabetical information on the periodical literature surveyed, in which asterisks mark the titles of dailies, weeklies, journals, and annual publications with a special focus on American literature. The appendix also accommodates a general name index, as well as a separate alphabetical register of the names of the translators mentioned in the volume. Fourthly, Lehel Vadon's bibliography, which is dedicated to his one-time mentor Professor László Országh, is an exemplary work, almost uncharacteristically thorough, painstakingly accurate, and professional. The relevant data in the respective dailies, weeklies, journals, and yearbook were not gleaned from other bibliographies; in exploring them, the author had physical contact with each item, he held them all in his own hands. He did indispensable research, among other places, in the National Széchényi Library, the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Arts and Sciences, in the libraries of Kossuth University in Debrecen, in libraries and archives in Pozsony 181