Minority Literature and the Women Writers Problémafelvetés

Abstract

Border changes following World War 1 also led to important changes in the institution of literature. The concepts of some abstract universal Hungarian literature and border appropriate minority Hungarian literatures evolved in parallel. In my study I examine the ways the borders hinder and help women writers of minority Hungarian literature, above all those ones living in Czechoslovakia until its break up. I will explore if and how they could publish their works, take their place in the newly-born literary canon. I shall also look at if minority media could make their situation easier or more difficult in a situation where literature was perceived to have a main aim: to maintain and strengthen identity. To explore the situation of women writers there is a need to reflect on the almost total emptiness of the concept of “minority literature“ because the concept of „minority literature“ does not have a denotative meaning and so the meaning of minority women writers may also become empty. It then becomes necessary to discuss these women writers with the help of femnist literary theories and its consequence for the reception of women writers in particular periods of time in the twentieth century.