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Article published In:
Transnational Image Building: Linking up Translation Studies, Reception Studies and Imagology
Edited by Paola Gentile, Fruzsina Kovács and Marike van der Watt
[Translation Spaces 10:1] 2021
► pp. 48–69

The ‘other’ Transylvanian count

Auto- and heteroimages in the Hungarian and English reception of Miklós Bánffy’s The Writing on the Wall

ORCID logo | KU Leuven
ORCID logo | Eötvös Loránd University
This article discusses the contemporary Hungarian and Anglophone reception of a trilogy of recently ‘rediscovered’ novels chronicling the demise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Written by the Transylvanian author and statesman Miklós Bánffy (1873–1950), the trilogy was originally published in 1934–1940, was suppressed during the Communist period and was published in English translation only in 1999 after years of work by Bánffy’s daughter, Katalin Bánffy-Jelen, and her co-translator, Patrick Thursfield. Through an analysis of auto- and heteroimages, we explore how reviewers in the source and target cultures dealt with imagologically relevant items. The analysis shows that reviews in Hungarian-language Transylvanian newspapers focused on situating Bánffy and his work in the Hungarian canon and emphasized Bánffy’s regional role, whereas Anglophone reviewers used Bánffy’s life to frame a pan-European discourse, drawing comparisons to Anglophone and international writers. We also discuss a heteroimage that emerged despite playing no role in the story itself: vampires.
Keywords: Hungarian literature, world literature, Transylvania, Miklós Bánffy, Austro-Hungarian Empire
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Connecting imagology, translation and reception
  • Autoimages in the contemporary Hungarian reception of Bánffy’s trilogy
    • Autoimages of Bánffy
    • Autoimages of the trilogy
    • Autoimages of Transylvania
  • Heteroimages in the anglophone reception of Bánffy’s trilogy
    • Dracula
    • Heteroimages of Bánffy
    • Linking mental images through names
  • By way of conclusion: Some lines of comparison
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 June 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ts.20033.mcm
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