The Hungarian Market of 19th Century Urban Nationalism and the Recycling of the Urban Mystery Novel

Márton-Simon, Anna (2019) The Hungarian Market of 19th Century Urban Nationalism and the Recycling of the Urban Mystery Novel. Hungarian Studies, 33 (1). pp. 5-22. ISSN 1588-2772

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Abstract

Following the success of Eugène Sue's serial novel Les Mystères de Paris a pattern emerges in the era's literary market. Sue's works provide a narrative, politico-cultural and economic model with a worldwide impact. These works created a new way of presenting a city, while also developing a type of narrative that sometimes precedes the actual urbanization of an area, thus offering ready-made panels when talking about often unfinished processes. Several Hungarian works following the same literary model were published that used the panels introduced by Sue in relation to a city early in the process of urbanization and promote a distinctly national image of Budapest. The popularity of Sue's works helped the kindred Hungarian novels become successful projects. This piece of research attempts to identify the ways in which these transnational patterns became adapted and domesticated by the earliest Hungarian urban mysteries and helped the emergence of a specifically urban nationalist sentiment.

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