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)

his key-note lecture, the first version of the later essay, at the HUSSE 5 Conference in Eger, 2001. There are certain hidden gems of Egri's scholarly heritage which did not find their way into any of the books for some reason and remained within the respective bounds of relatively isolated essays, participating in the process of the ongoing inquiry established by his work nonetheless. The 1980 article titled "The Genetic and Generic Aspects of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage" unmistakably joins itself to the first period, by contending that the novel under inspection displays a "[...] many-faceted complex pattern [that] sheds explanatory light on the fermenting trends in American fiction at the close of the century, a period which gave birth to the American novel" (333). In a way the essay is a further extension of the research producing the book which discusses the modernist aspects of Hemingway's narrative form and discourse, since it critically engages with the cross-fertilization of genres as well as subgenres. As clarified by Egri's line of argument, the integration of naturalistic, impressionistic, symbolistic, and potentially expressionistic-surrealistic layers into the realism characteristic of Crane's method of writing is inseparable from the lyrical and dramatic modes enriching the fictional to enhance the portrayal of changing moods and conflicting perspectives. Addressing the Nature of Poetry and the Poetic The first period having focused on modernism chiefly in fiction, in the second one Egri's new direction was to address the nature of poetry, departing from and arguing with the relevant ideas of György Lukács and Christopher Caudwell. A költészet valósága: líra és lirizálódás (The Reality of Poetry: The Lyrical and Lyricization) is the title given to the 1975 book dedicated to the memory of György Lukács, Egri's eminent teacher and master. A theoretically framed volume, it seems to have evolved and become synthesized from the lectures the author gave about varios English poets and poetic genres to his students at Lajos Kossuth University, Debrecen during the preceding years. The most detailed and thorough review of A költészet valósága was written by Agnes Péter. Published in Filológiai Közlöny (Philological Review), her evaluation of the book points out that it engages with virtualy all the significant questions having been raised 18