EGER JOURNAL OF AMERICAN STUDIES VOLUME XIII 2012 SPECIAL ISSUE IN HONOR OF PROFESSOR ZSOLT KÁLMÁN VIRÁGOS EDITOR: LEHEL VADON DEPARTMENT OF AMERICAN STUDIES ESZTERHÁZY KÁROLY COLLEGE EGER ISSN 1786-2337 HU ISSN 1786-2337 COPYRIGHT © BY EJAS All rights reserved A kiadásért felelős az Eszterházy Károly Főiskola rektora Megjelent az EKF Líceum Kiadó gondozásában Igazgató: Kis-Tóth Lajos Felelős szerkesztő: Zimányi Árpád Műszaki szerkesztő: Nagy Sándorné IN HONOR OF ZSOLT KÁLMÁN VIRÁGOS CONTENTS ______________________________________________________ EJAS Lehel Vadon Zsolt Kálmán Virágos Is 70 ....................................................................... 7 INTERVIEW .................................................................................................. 9 Gabriella Varró A Man Who Loved His Work: An Interview with Zsolt Kálmán Virágos ................................................................................ 9 PHOTOS ..................................................................................................... 39 Lehel Vadon Photos from the Life of Zsolt Kálmán Virágos ........................................ 39 PUBLICATIONS........................................................................................... 95 Lehel Vadon The Publications of Zsolt Kálmán Virágos 1969–2012 ........................... 95 Lehel Vadon A Bibliography of Writings on Zsolt Kálmán Virágos and His Works ............................................................................................... 113 ESSAYS.................................................................................................... 119 Irén Annus America, the Earthly Paradise: Early Depictions ................................... 119 Péter Csató Antipodean Encounters: Socratic Conversation and Ironic Redescription as Complementary Rhetorical Strategies in Richard Rorty’s Metaphilosophy ........................................................... 127 Mónika Fodor The Past is Present—Off Canonical Interpretations of History in American Life Narratives ....................................................................... 147 Tibor Glant Ninety Years of United States-Hungarian Relations ............................. 163 5 Ágnes Zsófia Kovács Melancholy Ghosts of the Old South: Henry James’s Adventures in the US ................................................................................................. 185 Zsuzsanna Lénárt-Muszka “A Twitter, a Coo, a Subdued Roar”: Animal Symbolism in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man ................................................................ 201 Csaba Lévai Henry Clay and Lajos Kossuth’s Visit in the United States, 1851–1852 .............................................................................................. 219 Éva Mathey Lord Rothermere and Hungarian Revisionism ....................................... 243 Judit Molnár Distinct Places Imbued with Importance in the Lives of Immigrants: Frank G. Paci: Black Madonna (1982) ............................. 253 Lenke Németh Racial Identity Transformed: Suzan-Lori Parks’s Topdog/Underdog and David Henry Hwang’s Yellowface .................... 263 Zoltán Peterecz Money Has No Smell: Anti-Semitism in Hungary and the Anglo-Saxon World, and the Launching of the International Reconstruction Loan for Hungary in 1924. ............................................ 273 Judit Szathmári Sherman Alexie’s Postindian Reconstruction of the Spokane Indian Reservation in Reservation Blues ................................................ 291 András Tarnóc The Indian captive as an early manifestation of the American Hero ..... 301 Gabriella Vöő The Body Politic Throws a Party: Political Allegory in Poe’s “King Pest” ................................................................................... 313 BOOK REVIEWS Máté Gergely Balogh Balogh, Máté Gergely. The Kossuth Emigration and the Civil War. ..... 327 6 Zsolt Kálmán Virágos Is 70 This special issue of Eger Journal of American Studies is dedicated to Zsolt Kálmán Virágos to congratulate him and to celebrate the distinguished professor, scholar, and highly honored teacher on his 70th birthday. Zsolt Kálmán Virágos, professor of American Studies, head of the North American Department, director of the Institute of English and American Studies, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Humanity at the University of Debrecen, is a nationally and internationally acknowledged expert of American literary and cultural studies. His special fields of interest and research are: 19th- and 20th-century U.S. literature, literatures of American minorities, the iconography of American culture, prose literature of the American South, African–American literature and thought, ethnic and minority cultures in North America, myth and ideology in American culture and society, and a few more. He is a critic of myth criticism examining the usefulness of myth in today’s literary theory and American social consciousness. His contribution to literary scholarship and culture laid down in 9 books, some edited volumes, and numerous studies and articles—3.250 printed pages—published in Hungary and abroad. Besides being a scholar, an Americanist, Zsolt Kálmán Virágos is a teacher. Another area of his academic interest is methodology and language teaching. He was a teacher of English, a demonstration teacher for four years at Kossuth University’s teacher training secondary school, and he taught methodology to students at the university. He co-authored four textbooks as a result of this. He was a successful and inspiring teacher in the secondary school, and he is a respected professor at the University of Debrecen. Generations of English- and American-major students studied under him and grow up on his books. He was a visiting professor and researcher at famous American and European universities. 7 His teaching and research are acknowledged and appreciated by his students, colleagues and Americanists in Hungary and beyond the border. He is an influential and leading scholar who made major professional contribution to American Studies in Hungary. He is the disciple of Professor László Országh, he began his scholarly career under his guidance. He is a dedicated representative of the “Országh school”. On behalf of our faculty, I express my gratitude that he accepted my invitation and became a professor of the Department of American Studies at Eszterházy Károly College, Eger. His precious teaching and work are exemplary for both our teachers and students. On his birthday colleagues, scholars, students, and friends, and all those who know and love him pay tribute to the outstanding lifework of the eminent scholar, teacher, master and mentor, and wish many happy returns, good health, and many more creative years of research, writing, teaching, and happiness with his family. Lehel Vadon 8 INTERVIEW ______________________________________________________ EJAS A Man Who Loved His Work: An Interview with Zsolt Kálmán Virágos Gabriella Varró This interview was prompted by the occasion of the 70th birthday of Professor Virágos, my teacher, academic advisor and mentor who I am proud to call my friend as well. Over the long afternoon we discussed issues that have always been of great concern for us both, such as memory, the process of remembering, various influences upon the creative work, such as traveling, inheritance, family background and books. The interview starts in medias res, and ends unfinished, reflecting on the experience we have always had in real life, namely that our conversations were endless and could continue infinitely. VARRÓ: My first question pertains to your views on memory and the act of remembering, partly inspired by our mutual favorite Native American poet, Joy Harjo. How great a role does memory play in your life? VIRÁGOS: I have a great respect for this God-given faculty; I believe that it is largely due to our memory that we are human. Thus memory has an enormous significance in my everyday life. Indeed, I am firmly convinced that the sum total of my memories is more than 80% of what I know, thus what I (“me”) actually am. It is intriguing to think that certain episodes in our lives, in the private sphere, are stored in our memory, and they exist only there. In my case events and scenes are primarily stored in visual images. Besides, these images appear to be keyed to affective 9 reverberations. The mind is a great reservoir of mental images; indeed, sometimes I think a large part of my consciousness is a picture gallery, rather than a story book. However, our mind is not always a reliable guardian of its content and, more characteristically, when our memory ceases to exist, that particular scene or episode is bound to perish. Thus, for instance, a brief and intensive love affair is totally dependent on whether the parties involved continue to possess the capability of recall. The other side of the coin is that sometimes we human beings cannot get rid of our (unpleasant) memories. And unlearning can be a tough business. These options are, needless to say, the great themes of literature. Recall, for instance, the American writer William Faulkner’s obsessed characters who are troubled to an excessive degree by mentally sorting out and telling apart past and present, cause and effect, the preoccupation also with the intrusions of the past—as present—into the present, and how the “avatars” of a lived and imagined personal past come alive to haunt the individual as messengers from a former life. VARRÓ: I can see that you find it hard to avoid making