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)

learned and genuinely engaged to be merely trendy." The reviewer concludes his sympathetically sound appraisal of Modem Games by recommending it as "essential reading for dramaturgs, critics and theorists" (90). Günter Walch, writing for Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik

, welcomes Egri's comparative subject elaborated in what he calls a "lively book," an "exception to the rule [...] at a time of overspecialization" (79). Furthermore, Walch calls attention to some other valuable details that the study offers on Stoppard, for instance concerning the writer's "personal involvement in political activities [which] changed his social and moral commitment," which results in the rediscovery of "lost values" in a ertain segment of his oeuvre by Egri (80). As if sharing and enjoying the Yeatsian "fascination of what is difficult" (Yeats 104), Egri continued to deal with Stoppard in other interdisciplinary essays. "From Painting to Play: Magritte and Stoppard," included in Text in Context, undertakes a kind of literary detective work, somewhat in the spirit of Stoppard himself, exploring the paradoxical presence-in-absence of the surrealist painter in the drama. The painter's method being identified as "substantiated absurdity" by Egri, the playwright is said to enhance, exaggerate, and ironize its model (241, 246), replacing the mystification of the world by its demystification. Another essay in the same collection, "From Painting to Play: Duchamp and Stoppard" is as much of a study of the painter as that of the drama Artist Descending a Staircase. Egri is surveying the painter's work to contextualize the picture Nude Descending a Staircase, which obviously inspired the playwright. By writing the drama, Egri summarizes, "Stoppard's dual position results in a spirited insight into, and a witty ironization of, Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, and broadens into a dramatic discussion of the situation of art in modern times" (237). Its content and method of argumentation combined in an original way, Egri's essay itself presents a spirited insight of its own into the postmodern playwright's intellectually provoking and teasingly intricate artistic endeavours. The other contemporary playwright Egri found equally intriguing was, evidently, Beckett, perhaps also because the writer had absorbed so much from his master, Joyce, who fascinated Egri thoughout his career. Text in Context includes an essay which discusses Act Without 31