Proofreaders, Translators - Co-authors? : József Eötvös's Concealed Bilingualism

Gángó, Gábor (2023) Proofreaders, Translators - Co-authors? : József Eötvös's Concealed Bilingualism. In: Hidden Multilingualism in 19th-Century European Literature. De Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 120-144. ISBN 9783110778632

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Abstract

My study explores the hidden bilingualism of an eminent protagonist of 19th-century nation building in Hungary: József Eötvös (1813–1871), poet, playwright, novelist, and political thinker. To be able to fulfil his life’s mission in the interest of Hungarian cultural nationalism, Eötvös, whose native language was German, had to recur to various stratagems during his career to simulate a Hungarian monoliteracy. His efforts encompassed the hired or friendly assistance of a number of fellow intellectuals who corrected Eötvös’s Hungarian texts to conceal his insufficient linguistic competence, as well as translated his German writings to make them appear as originals.

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