A posztmodern alternatívái: a Térey-példa

A referencialitás kérdései Térey János verses regényeiben

Abstract

Alternatives of Postmodernism: Térey’s Example.
Questions of Referentiality in János Térey’s Verse Novels

This paper aims to interpret two verse novels by János Térey: Protocol (Protokoll, 2010) and The Slightest Ice Age (A Legkisebb Jégkorszak, 2015). After outlining the context of North American ‘post-postmodern’ prose poetics and the modes of social representation in contemporary Hungarian literature, the study turns to reveal the tensions and differences between Térey’s first, generally well-received verse novel, Paulus (2001) and the two works published a decade later. The most important differences – beyond those of verse form – are examined in two subchapters: the first on the irony of the texts’ composition and of the narrator’s voice, the second on the tools of referentiality, i.e. the representation of society and politics, or the allusions to philosophy of history. By interpreting these two main texts, the study makes the claim that the most important novelty that Térey’s verse novels bring about is one of both form (poetics) and content (thought) – that is, the ironical edge of language recedes in parallel with the growing importance of historical, social and political representation (which seems at times inseparable from political commitment.)