Paradise from behind the Iron Curtain
Reading, Translating and Staging Milton in Communist Hungary
9781787358546
9781787358553
Distributed for UCL Press
Paradise from behind the Iron Curtain
Reading, Translating and Staging Milton in Communist Hungary
The role and reception of Milton’s work in Communist Hungary.
This book provides a detailed survey of the key responses to Milton’s work in Hungarian state socialism. The four decades between 1948 and 1989 saw a radical revision of previous critical and artistic positions and resulted in the emergence of some characteristically Eastern European responses to Milton’s works. Appraisals of Milton’s works in the communist era proved more controversial than receptions of other major Western authors: on the one hand, Milton’s participation in the Civil War earned him the title of a “revolutionary hero,” on the other hand, religious aspects of his works were often disregarded and sometimes proactively suppressed. This book highlights these diverging responses and places them in the wider context of socialist cultural policy. In addition, it presents the full Hungarian script of the 1970 theatrical performance of Milton’s Paradise Lost, the first of its kind since the work’s publication, alongside a parallel English translation, enabling a deeper reflection on Milton’s original theodicy and its possible interpretations in communist Hungary.
This book provides a detailed survey of the key responses to Milton’s work in Hungarian state socialism. The four decades between 1948 and 1989 saw a radical revision of previous critical and artistic positions and resulted in the emergence of some characteristically Eastern European responses to Milton’s works. Appraisals of Milton’s works in the communist era proved more controversial than receptions of other major Western authors: on the one hand, Milton’s participation in the Civil War earned him the title of a “revolutionary hero,” on the other hand, religious aspects of his works were often disregarded and sometimes proactively suppressed. This book highlights these diverging responses and places them in the wider context of socialist cultural policy. In addition, it presents the full Hungarian script of the 1970 theatrical performance of Milton’s Paradise Lost, the first of its kind since the work’s publication, alongside a parallel English translation, enabling a deeper reflection on Milton’s original theodicy and its possible interpretations in communist Hungary.
296 pages | 8 halftones | 6.14 x 9.21 | © 2022
Literature and Literary Criticism: General Criticism and Critical Theory
Table of Contents
List of figures
Acknowledgements
A note on texts
Introduction
1 Forms of attention and neglect: Milton’s epics in print and on stage – and in oblivion
2 Samson: An unlikely hero of socialism
3 A tale of two scholars: Milton’s prose in communist Hungary
4 ‘I rebel quietly’: Revolution and gender in Hungarian translations of Milton’s shorter poems
Epilogue
Appendix
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
A note on texts
Introduction
1 Forms of attention and neglect: Milton’s epics in print and on stage – and in oblivion
2 Samson: An unlikely hero of socialism
3 A tale of two scholars: Milton’s prose in communist Hungary
4 ‘I rebel quietly’: Revolution and gender in Hungarian translations of Milton’s shorter poems
Epilogue
Appendix
Bibliography
Index