The diminished prestige of literature may be interpreted in connection with the general transition from the cultural system of nation states to cosmopolitanism. Nationalism attaches strongly positive values to the national culture, since the concept of nation is based on the concept of a shared culture. Many countries promote and finance literary production because they regard the continuous existence of national culture as of crucial importance. A cosmopolitan perspective can apparently provide neither a scholarly interpretative practice, which would be useful for nation states, nor deep emotional commitment on behalf of readers.
The sponsoring activity of nation states is part of the project of nation building, which used to be connected with the economic elite’s demands to enforce their interests. The second modernity experienced basic changes in the attitudes of the elites. The new global elite is not interested in nation building any longer, since even the residues of defensive national markets seem to restrict their economic activity. The new centres of power are not interested in promoting culture, since the traditional erudition has lost its importance for them even in creating group identity.
The immense popularity of fiction during the nineteenth century is partly attributed to the fact that after the break down of a single and generally accepted worldview and value system, people turned toward literature to find some interpretations of their life. An aspect of the change is that spiritual or discursive and not narrative interpretations are needed now.
The global risks of the present era have developed cosmopolitan and worldwide communities of awareness. The question arises whether this situates literature or high culture in general as a peripheral and childish game of the irresponsible past generations, or can create some kind of literature, which counts on the awareness of global threats. It is highly questionable that such a literature can exist but it seems that satirical and comical genres are appropriate to display such contents.
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Péter Hajdu
Péter Hajdu (1966, Budapest, Hungary) studied Literature, Greek and Latin at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary, and wrote his dissertation on late Roman epic poetry. He is editor-in-chief of Neohelicon, a major international journal on comparative literature studies. Member of advisory boards of five international journals on literary studies (Proudy, Czech Republic; Frontiers of Narrative Studies, Germany; Recherche Litteraire/Literary Research, Belgium, Primerjalna književnost, Slovenia, Clotho, Slovenia). He did extensive research in the fields of comparative literature, theory of literature, narratology, and classical philology. From 2002 to 2009 he was a member of the International Comparative Literature Association's (ICLA) Research Committee for East- and South-East Europe, 2008-2014 he was member of the standing research committee for literary theory, and 2010-16 member of the ICLA Executive Council. 2002-2012 secretary, since 2016 president of Hungarian Comparative Literature Association. He lectured at various universities in Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, PR China, and Japan. He has published 6 books and more than 130 papers, and presented his research achievements in more than 70 international academic conferences. He discussed the writing of Kálmán Mikszáth, a major Hungarian prose writer in three monographs. He edited or co-edited 10 collections of articles on topics of literary theory, translation studies, nineteenth-century European literature, generic traditions, and Horace’ poetry. He is distinguished professor at Shenzhen University.
Some recent publications:
1. “The Oppressive and the Subversive Sides of theoretical Discourse.” In Calin-Andrei Mihailescu, Takayuki Yokota-Murakami (Eds.), Policing Literary Theory. Leiden: Brill, 2018, 135-145.
2.“The Hungarian Spectrum of Petronius’s Satyricon.” In Matthew Reynolds (Ed.) Prismatic Translation. Cambridge: Legenda, 2020, 305-323.
3.“The Many Sources of Meaning.” Philosophy and Literature 44, 2020, 124-139.
4.“Fictionality in Historical Television Series.” Primerjalna književnost 43(1), 2020, 97-113.
5.“Terry Pratchett’s thought experiments about the body.” Neohelicon 47, 2020, 75-87.
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