Gastro-literature. Motifs of eating in the works of Lajos Parti Nagy

Tamara Tóth

IN: Partitúra Irodalomtudományi folyóirat, Volume: X , Issue 2, 2015, p. 61-78., ISSN 1336-7307

DOI: 10.17846/PA.2015.10.2.61-78

Abstract:

Eating is a vital human activity, it is necessary for survival, and it is deeply related to social habits. The way how people nourish themselves expresses the indispensable needs of the social body. The human body is the invention of a culture, it has metaphorical meanings to the world, it can symbolize ideological views. Each society determines what food is, how we should eat and what is allowable to eat. Parti Nagy Lajos shows us different societies in his books through the act of eating. One of his characters lives under the Stalinist dictatorship, while others live in capitalism. What is common in these societies is that both try to transform men into productive, profitable human-machine hybrids. The writer’s main characters’ most important goal is to struggle against these coercive forces. The state ideologies try to transform not only people’s daily habits, eating rituals, and physical appearances but also their ways of thinking – the protagonists of PNL try to fight with this oppressive power by making their own bodies useless for the regime. in my study i am analyzing those works of Pnl, where food and its society-related concerns have been given a central place (in Parti Nagy Lajos’s works).

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Partitúra is a Hungarian literary journal published in Slovakia twice a year. The first edition was issued in 2006. From 2007 to 2014 its publishers were the Faculty of Central European Studies at The Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra in cooperation with Sambucus Literary Society. Since 2014 the Faculty of Central European Studies at the CPU in Nitra became the sole publisher.

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