Pázmány Papers – Journal of Languages and Cultures

Foreword

2026-02-25T14:59:51+00:00

Ted Hughes’s Poetry

2025-04-01T10:45:35+00:00

This study examines the poetic evolution of Ted Hughes by analysing his collections Lupercal (1960), Birthday Letters (1998), and Capriccio (1990) through modernist and postmodernist perspectives. While Hughes has often been aligned with the late modernist tradition, his later works – particularly Birthday Letters and Capriccio – demonstrate a shift towards postmodern concerns with subjectivity, fragmentation, and the instability of narrative authority. Drawing on theoretical insights from Antal Bókay and Mihály Szegedy-Maszák, the study explores how Hughes’s engagement with myth, trauma, and autobiographical memory both extends and complicates modernist legacies. Special attention is given to the poet’s self-mythologising gestures, including his reflections in “The Hanged Man and the Dragonfly,” which illuminate a dynamic interplay between personal history and archetypal structures. The analysis also shows that Hughes’s later poetry is shaped by his ongoing poetic engagement with Sylvia Plath, whose influence is visible in both the emotional intensity and the spiritual depth of these works. By comparing the formal and thematic strategies of the three collections, the study argues that Hughes’s oeuvre occupies a liminal space between modernism and postmodernism, revealing a poetic voice that is simultaneously continuous with tradition and radically self-renewing.

Un/Divided Loyalties in Anita Rau Badami’s Tamarind Mem

2025-05-03T12:56:36+00:00

This paper aims to explore the tension between mobility, migration, and travelling, on the one hand, and settlement, stability, housing, and accommodation on the other, as a major theme in the South Asian Canadian diasporic author Anita Rau Badami’s debut novel Tamarind Mem (1996). As seen, it is my contention that questions of loyalty and belonging arise from this tension, which manifests itself in the variously troubled relationships the two female protagonists have to their numerous homes, real or imaginary, during their migration inside or outside of India because for them, the home as such is always imbued with memories of the familial and communal past, as well as a sense of isolation and dislocation. The examination of questions of loyalty and belonging in relation to the home in such a context necessitates the use of diaspora criticism as well as the application of cognitive literary studies in the analysis to follow.

The Borgiani Armeni 65 Manuscript

2025-08-19T12:02:33+00:00

The manuscript Borgiani armeni 65 from the collection of Vatican Apostolic Library is one of the 137 Armenian documents preserved there. The document is rare in its kind as it contains different pages from different time periods of Armenian history bound together. The page 8r of it is a unique letter written in 1711 in the monastery of Saint James – the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Besides being an invaluable source for historical analysis, it can also be perceived as a representation of early modern connectivity among Armenian churches in the Ottoman Empire. In this case, the letter is an alms-collecting request to the Armenian Diocese of Beroea (Aleppo). Besides being considered a tool of early modern connectivity and mobility, the performative turn in the requesting part of the letter allows it to be analyzed from a unique angle.

Äugl or Äuglein?

2025-05-17T08:52:35+00:00

The usage of diminutive forms has been widely described for spoken and written German in Austria. However, data for the use of diminutives in sung German remains scarce. This study investigates the use of diminutives in Austrian pop songs from two different periods of Austrian pop music, the 1970s and the 2010s. It determines the types and tokens of diminutives in 40 Austrian pop songs, thereby highlighting changes and developments which may be meaningful for the construction of national identity in Austrian pop music.

Teaching Metaphors in the EFL Classroom

2025-04-23T11:03:08+00:00

This article is part of a larger research project focusing on metaphorical language production in second language acquisition. In the current study, I first explore the significance of metaphor awareness in second language learning and the current state of research in L2 metaphor pedagogy, particularly the integration of conceptual metaphor awareness into EFL instruction. Second, I present a case study of Georgian EFL learners, which investigates the effects of teaching metaphorical expressions on learners’ production of the taught expressions, with particular emphasis on the CMT-based approach and the incorporation of TBLT methodology. The effectiveness of this approach was assessed using a pre-test, post-test, two-week delayed test, and follow-up survey, which suggested significant improvement in the metaphor awareness of Georgian EFL learners compared to the control group. This study builds on Saaty’s (2016) experimental research and extends its approach to evaluate the effectiveness of CMT-based instruction for advanced EFL learners.

Correlations in Frequency of Coda Voiceless Stop Variants with Phonological and Stylistic Factors in Vietnamese-Accented English

2025-05-03T13:03:59+00:00

This study investigates how Vietnamese-accented English speakers articulate coda voiceless plosives (/p, t, k/), influenced by L1 phonology and sociolinguistic factors. Since Vietnamese only allows unreleased /p, t, k/ in coda positions and forbids consonant clusters, the learners often adapt English coda plosives using modifications such as glottalisation, deletion, and vowel insertion. Using Labov’s sociolinguistic interview framework, speech data were gathered from 22 Vietnamese speakers across different ages, regions, and English proficiency levels in four speech styles. Ten allophonic variants were identified, with unreleased and/or glottalised forms being the most common (49.3%). The study found that speech style, place of articulation, and cluster position significantly influenced pronunciation, glottalisation and deletion increased in informal contexts, especially for /t/ and /k/, whereas /p/ remained more stable. The findings suggest some VE variants mirror native English usage, offering insights for improving English pronunciation instruction in Vietnam through context-sensitive, evidence-based approaches.

The Ethics of Logic

2025-07-16T18:57:19+00:00

The logic of ethical reasoning has been analysed in many different contexts in analytic philosophy. But is there such a thing as the ethics of logic? In other words, does logic, or the use of formal systems lead to certain commitments that can be considered ethical? In this paper I will explore these questions in the context of Kurt Gödel’s “Gibbs Lecture” delivered at Brown University in 1951. In this address to the American Mathematical Society Gödel assesses the philosophical consequences of his incompleteness theorems in terms of what Solomon Feferman has called “Gödel’s dichotomy,” according to which either “the human mind (even within the realm of pure mathematics) infinitely surpasses the powers of any finite machine, or else there exist absolutely unsolvable Diophantine problems” [that is, basic arithmetical problems]. In my paper I will argue that both these options are thoroughly problematic in their epistemological implications. Gödel’s discussion, however, leaves a third option open, as well. For he concedes that the mind (human reasoning) can be represented by a finite machine (that is, by a well-defined formal logical system) which does not understand its own functioning and does not know its own consistency. Although Gödel does not consider this to be a genuine third option, I will argue that this conception is perhaps the most fruitful, or least problematic, model of how human reason can contain knowledge. As such, however, this approach requires certain commitments which can best be described as ethical. In particular, it calls for (1) a commitment to the consistency of human reasoning and (2) a commitment to truth, as the truth of the undecidable proposition pertaining to the consistent system of human reasoning. I will argue that these ethical commitments are inevitable once we deploy formal-logical systems to produce knowledge about reality. To this extent, therefore, these commitments constitute the ethics of logic.

To What Extent Can Ethics Be Critical?

2025-08-19T12:04:05+00:00

If we approach ethics as a demanding practical orientation, we must realize that, since criticism necessarily creates distance, it practically reflects itself out of the Levinasian proximity, whereas ethical relation, by comparison, requires to stay with or in the company of the other. Ethical encounter preserves the difference between participants, but instead of asserting or constructing a critical stance of my own, I am exposed to the impulses of the other and I learn to attune myself to them through gestural resonances. My proposal called practice-oriented physics conceives of literature not as texts, contexts or socio-historical construction, but as living gestures of attention in the time(s) of literary writing and reading. This paper explores these theoretical and practical problems in a short story by Ádám Bodor, extending the critical “extendance” of the “Saying” beyond the “Said” to the rhythmic dimensions of practical orientation.

Reading, Invention, Secret

2025-09-10T10:18:19+00:00

This study examines the so-called “ethical turn” in literary studies through Jacques Derrida’s writings, questioning whether deconstruction itself underwent such a shift. While critics often speak of an ethical or political turn in Derrida’s work from the late 1980s onwards, Derrida himself resisted the language of “turns,” emphasizing continuity rather than rupture. The essay explores how deconstruction’s engagement with notions such as gift, forgiveness, hospitality, and responsibility demonstrates that ethics and politics were always already present in Derrida’s thought. It further considers how deconstruction generates its own ethos, beyond prescriptive rules, as a hyperbolic ethics rooted in the impossible and the unconditional. The connection between this ethos and literature emerges most forcefully in Derrida’s reflections on secrecy: literature is not the concealment of a hidden meaning, but the experience of secrecy itself. Readings of Abraham, Melville’s Bartleby, and other texts illustrate how literary writing stages singularity, alterity, and responsibility beyond classical ethical frameworks.

Suspended Humanity

2025-11-21T10:01:02+00:00

A Review of Samantha Harvey's Orbital.

Tér-iszony. Szörnyűséges terek a populáris kultúrában, edited by Ildikó Limpár, Tortoma, Barót, 2024.

2025-09-23T12:40:08+00:00

Tér-iszony. Szörnyűséges terek a populáris kultúrában (Space-Phobia – Horrific Spaces in Popular Culture), edited by Ildikó Limpár and published by Tortoma in 2024, offers a multifaceted examination of the role of fictional spaces in popular culture. The volume emphasizes that spaces are not mere backdrops but active participants in narrative development, reflecting psychological, social, and ethical dimensions. Contributors explore a wide array of spatial forms, from post-apocalyptic landscapes, pandemic quarantines, and suburban gothic settings to urban dystopias, fantastical maps, and virtual mazes, showing how these environments evoke fear, alienation, and social tension, and mirror collective anxieties and cultural traumas. Studies also consider the ethical and ontological challenges posed by posthuman and eco-gothic spaces, as well as the historical and political significance of real-world terrifying spaces. By blending literary, filmic, and cultural analysis, the volume highlights the interdisciplinary relevance of spatial studies for understanding human experience, morality, and societal structures. Striking a balance between scholarly rigor and accessibility, Space-Phobia provides a theoretical and practical framework for analyzing the spatial dimensions of popular culture, making it essential reading for scholars, students, and enthusiasts interested in the intersections of narrative, space, and cultural imagination.

Religion and American Politics: Domestic and International Contexts, edited by Paulina Napierała, Peter Lang Group, Berlin, 2024.

2025-08-02T09:53:33+00:00

Review.

Pop and Postfeminism: Female Dandyism in Popular Music by Nathalie Weidhase, Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2024.

2025-04-29T17:52:56+00:00

Nathalie Weidhase’s Pop and Postfeminism: Female Dandyism in Popular Music (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024) examines the intersection of pop stardom, gender performance, and postfeminist discourse through the lens of female dandyism. Analyzing contemporary musicians who subvert traditional femininity with androgynous aesthetics and rebellious personas, Weidhase explores how these artists negotiate power, identity, and consumer culture.