Introduction to culture and literature
(2010)
Examination material for part-time students
Below, you will find the material of the examination.
The first section of this material consists of terms and issues that have not been discussed in the lectures (terms related to general cultural knowledge and terms related to the study of literature).
At the end of this material, you will find detailed instructions concerning the examination. If, after having read that section, you still have queries, please do not hesitate to contact me.
NB. You do not have to learn the definitions word by word (many of these things should be familiar from secondary school material, anyway): read the definitions first, and when are sure you have understood them, try to describe the phenomenon in your own words. Mind the spelling of certain terms. Correct spelling is part of the answer.
NB. Please make sure that you understand the term that is to be defined and that you are able to explain it in decent English. If you are in doubt, consult me or your seminar instructor.
NB. Many (not all ) of the terms that appear as essay questions are indicated with an *, set in BOLD CAPITALS.
I. “KULTÚRSZAVAK”
The list below contains words that belong to the basic vocabulary of any educated person, especially to that of anyone with a university degree in English. Familiarity with the basic concepts listed and defined below as well as their correct spelling is a precondition of passing the examination.
The Hungarian noun “tudomány” can be translated as scholarship (in a more general sense) or science, which refers only to the natural sciences.
Academic disciplines (“tudományok”, “tudományágak” in the most general sense) are divided into several categories, which include the following three:
sciences or natural sciences (“természettudományok”): disciplines like biology, chemistry, physics, medical science etc
social sciences (“társadalomtudományok”): academic disciplines like sociology, psychology, anthropology, political science etc
humanities or arts: (“bölcsész(et)tudományok”): academic disciplines including literary studies, history, art history, linguistics, etc
Please note that the expression (fine) arts is also used as the collective term for painting and sculpture (“képzőművészet”)
the intelligentsia (“értelmiség”): the collective word for intellectuals; an intellectual is an educated person, usually having a university degree, who is able to form his/her own opinions about the things of the world (politics, culture) and follows the developments of cultural and political life.
Philosophy
(the terms that follow have their origin in philosophical thought, but none of them are technical terms; acquiring more general meanings, they have all become part of educated discourse; thus, the definitions that follow are not strictly philosophical: they stress the more general usage of the terms)
a concept (“fogalom”): an abstract category (as opposed to a concrete name); e.g. the concept of love, the concept of freedom, equality or hatred
a binarity (binary opposition) (“bináris oppozíció”, “kétosztatúság”): a sharp opposition between two contrasting terms, such as the oppositions on which our (philosophical and everyday) thinking is based: e.g. subject/object, male/female, self/other, particular/universal, civilisation/barbarity etc
Here are a few crucial binary oppositions that play an important role in our thinking.
abstract — concrete
abstract (“elvont”): general, considered independently of any specific object or example;
concrete (“konkrét”): pertaining to a specific object, event or example. E.g. It is difficult to conceive of abstract concepts without concrete examples.
universal — particular:
universal (“egyetemes”): general, valid everywhere and in any set of circumstances;
particular (“egyedi”, filozófiai kategóriával “különös”): specific, individual. For instance: his particular case is an exception to the universal rule.
eternal — ephemeral:
eternal: timeless, perennial;
ephemeral: momentary, transitory, fleeting.
induction deduction:
induction: the mode or style of thinking that starts out from the particular (data of sensory experience) and, after having collected information, comes to general (universal) conclusions
deduction: the mode or style of thinking that starts out from universal rules and tries to understand the world of particulars by applying these rules
literal — figurative:
literal (“szószerinti”): straightforward (meaning);
figurative (“képes”, “átvitt”): different from the straightforward meaning, usually metaphorical
orality literacy:
oral means “spoken”, “not written”. Orality (“szóbeliség”) refers to those cultural traditions and institutions that do not use writing. E.g. folk literature used to spread orally/it was part of oral culture.
literacy (“írásbeliség”) means written forms of cultural practices, institutions created by these ways. Literacy also means the ability to read, spell and write. We talk about the rate of literacy in a certain country. In this sense, the opposite of literacy is illiteracy (analfabétizmus, írástudatlanság). Illiterate means “unable to read and write”, and literate means the opposite: “able to read and write”. Please note the difference between the words literary (having to do with literature), literal (straight, obvious meaning, the opposite of figurative) and literate (able to read and write).
metaphysics, metaphysical: the branch of philosophy that deals with final, ultimate things, the great questions of human existence, like for instance the concept and nature of being or reality, the relationship between general Being and individual Existence, the relationship between form and matter (substance), etc
transcendental: beyond/above our world, having authority over it; e.g., God is our most common idea of a personified transcendental force
transcendence: (the idea that there is) something (someone) beyond /above our world of everyday experience. The desire for some sort of transcendence seems to be a general feature of different human civilisations.
a phenomenon (“jelenség”); plural: phenomena: any object of the world as it appears to our senses. It also means “jelenség” in a more general cultural sense: we talk about social, cultural, political and artistic phenomena. For instance: the “single woman phenomenon” (“a szingli-jelenség”) reached a wider public through the Bridget Jones books.
perception (“észlelés”): the process (act) of becoming and being aware of the outside world through the senses. E.g. visual perception vs. tactile (“tapintás útján való”) perception
perceptual: having to do with perception; eg: the perceptual world: “érzéki valóság” (note that perceptive is an everyday word meaning simply “having sharp powers of observation”, someone who notices things around him/herself)
sensory (“érzékekkel kapcsolatos”, rajtuk keresztül történő): having to to with the senses. Note the difference form the often derogatory sensual (“érzéki”) and sensuous (“érzékszervekre hatással lévő”)
mental spiritual intellectual
mental (“szellemi”): pertaining to the mind in a general sense; e.g. “mental activity” refers to all kinds of spiritual and intellectual activity. For instance: as she had never been ill before, it was mentally very difficult for her now to cope with the fact that she was seriously ill. “Mental” is also used in phrases that refer to the health of the psyche: e.g. “mental health”; a mental hospital or home is a place with people suffering from a mental disorder.
spiritual (“spirituális”, “lelki”, “szellemi”): pertaining to the spirit, pertaining to the soul; also, pertaining to higher aspirations of mankind; e.g. religion, art or Platonic love are usually thought to belong to the spiritual sphere; spiritual love is usually conceived as the opposite of physical love.
intellectual (“intellektuális”, “szellemi”, “értelmi”): pertaining to the intellect, to reason, rational; e.g. solving a mathematical or philosophical problem requires a great deal of intellectual effort.
experience:
in Hungarian, the three main senses of this word are rendered through three different words: “tapasztalás”, “tapasztalat”, “élmény”.
experience as “tapasztalás”: the result of perception and of existing in the world, the lived knowledge of the world. E.g. We learn through experience.
experience as “élmény”: a “memorable experience” (in this sense, the word usually gets an adjective: a pleasant or unpleasant etc experience).
experience as “tapasztalat”, “tudás”: here, experience is the opposite of “innocence”; in this last sense, “experience” means “knowledge”, the condition attained after one has been initiated into the “real world”, suggesting “knowledge” and “maturity” as opposed to the immaturity and ignorance that characterise the state of innocence (e.g. an experienced craftsman/sportsman etc).
an axiom: an unquestionable basic rule that is accepted as true, not requiring further verification. E.g. parallels don’t meet.
verification (“bizonyítás”, “verifikáció”): the philosophical term for proving a theorem or a law.
a cliché: a commonplace, an overused phrase or effect (e.g. “c’est la vie”; “life is hard”).
a principle (“alapelv”, also “elv”): a basic rule, for instance, the principles of mathematics or book reviewing (should not be confused with “principal”, primarily an adjective meaning “chief” or “main”).
an analogy (analógia): a mental operation by means of which we compare two things or phenomena; a strategy of reasoning based on the comparison. For instance: many thinkers have found analogies between the structure of insect communities and human societies.
a fallacy (“tévképzet”, “téveszme”): an erroneous or mistaken belief; e.g. the pathetic fallacy (see below), or the fallacy of Geocentrism (the mistaken belief that the Earth is the centre of the universe).
a criterion (“kritérium”, “szükséges feltétel”, “ismérv”), (plural: criteria): a necessary condition. For instance: the criteria of a successful business enterprise, the criteria of a good poem, etc.
a consequence (“következmény”): that which follows from an act; an effect (of a cause).
causality (“okozatiság”): the principle of causes (“okok”) leading to effects (“okozatok”) and effects following from causes according to an understandable logic.
ontology, ontological (“lételmélet[i]”): the branch of philosophy that is concerned with the being of things as they are
epistemology, epistemological (“ismeretelmélet[i]”): the branch of philosophy that is concerned with cognition, that is with how the world appears to us and is knowable by us
The contrast of ontology and epistemology is one of the major binary oppositions in philosophy. For instance: if I am not certain that it is possible to really know the world because my senses, reason etc. are deficient, this is an epistemological problem. If, however, I have doubts about the existence of the world or objects of the world, the problem becomes ontological. The kind of philosophy that is ontologically based asks questions like “How do things exist?”, whereas epistemologically oriented philosophy is more likely to ask questions about the possibilities and methods of knowing the things of the world.
cognition (“megismerés”): the philosophical term for the process and activity of knowing the world
cognitive: having to do with cognition; e.g. cognitive maps are mental maps of the world that help us know and find our bearings in the world
Platonism: the philosophical idea that there is another world above ours, the world of pure Ideas and essences, which is more real (because purer) than our world of physical objects; therefore, our physica, perceptual world appears as a world of less reality, a pale imitation of the world above
solipsism, solipsistic: the belief that the only reality is the one experienced by the individual, therefore nothing else is real outside me
sceptic(al): doubting
scepticism: an attitude of doubt
agnosticism: the philosophical attitude denying that the world is knowable that we can know anything for certain about the world and about other people; an agnostic is a person who represents this attitude
empiricism: the philosophical belief that the world is knowable through the information gained by sensory experiences; empiricist philosophers claim that all our knowledge comes ultimately from the outside world (e.g. Locke)
empirical: having to do with the world as it is experienced by the senses. E.g. Many philosophers value only empirical knowledge as opposed to speculation
rationalism: the philosophical belief that the world is knowable by reason, by the innate rational structure of the human mind; the structures of our reason are supposed to correspond to the (mathematical) laws of the world (eg. Descartes)
ethics (etika): one of the main branches of philosophy, dealing with the ideas and rules of right and wrong and trying to define these ideas in a universal way
morality (erkölcs, erkölcsiség): system of ethical rules (e.g. Christian morality). Please do not confuse morality with “morality play” (further below in this list)
a moral (noun) (“tanulság”): the moral of a story is the lesson taught by that story
moral (adjective): a moral act is one that is right from an ethical point of view (opposite: immoral)
a moralist: a philosopher concerned with the principles of right and wrong
altruism, altruistic: unselfish(ness); an altruist is an unselfish person
hedonism: the idea that the main aim of human life is to enjoy ourselves
pragmatism: the philosophical trend that views general ideas and concepts in terms of their practical consequences; abstract ideas and principles are viewed not as timeless and universally true but as the results of a consensus, and accepted in so far as they are useful for the community. In a more general sense, a pragmatic attitude means a practical and utilitarian view of things.
dogma: a settled, rigidly held opinion or belief
dogmatic, dogmatism: the attitude that clings too rigidly to a set of ideas or rules, refusing to modify any detail in the light of experience; dogmatic views are inflexible, dogmatic persons tend to be overbearing and self-assertive
apocryphal (adj., “apokrif”): not admitted into the canon, because it is of dubious origin/authorship; in everyday language, the word is used to refer to an account or version of events that is different from the officially accepted version. Originally, apocryphal texts were those that were left out of the Bible because their authenticity was doubted.
*EXISTENTIALISM :
a vaguely definable group of philosophical tendencies in the second half of the nineteenth century and mainly in the twentieth century. Existentialism is probably the most influential philosophical tendency of the twentieth century in cultural and artistic terms, the only philosophical tendency that can be called “popular” in any sense. This popularity and impact is due to the fact that philosophy is concerned not so much with eternal and universal concepts but mainly with the lived life (existence) of the individual. It starts out from the experiences of the individual in the world, concentrating on the essential solitude of the individual in the face of other people, in the face of the oppressive laws and habits of society (alienation — “elidegenedés”), and in the face of the essentially alien, meaningless and even hostile universe. Existence is also seen as essentially absurd because of the fact of death. The existentialist hero is the lonely individual who deeply feels the hostility of the world and the absurdity of existence, and experiences what is called existential anxiety (“egzisztenciális szorongás”, the German word is “Angst”). This anxiety is different from simple fear, which has a definable object, whereas anxiety is more vague and general, having to do with the solitude and absurdity of existence in a hostile world. The existentialist hero’s “heroism” means that he is willing to face this anxiety and absurdity, and lives his life in a clear awareness of this anxiety, not hiding it behind layers of social customs. In this way, the existentialist hero confronts both society and the universe. Thus, existentialist heroes are usually individualistic, antisocial figures who consider social rules and rituals as lies that hide the essential horror and absurdity of existence, lies that pretend that the world is a place intended for human beings. Thinkers associated with existentialism include Søren Kierkegaard (19th century), Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre. Existentialism appears in a great deal of late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and film, for instance in the short stoires and novels of Dostoevsky (e.g. Notes from the Underground – Feljegyzések az egérlyukból, Ördögök) novels of Sartre (Nausea – Az undor), Camus (The Stranger – A közöny), in the stories and novels of Franz Kafka (texts full of existentialist anxiety), in the fiction and plays of Samuel Beckett, as well as in the theatre of the absurd (see further below).
Society, politics and culture
*MEANINGS OF THE WORD “IMAGE” :
an image: this is one of the untranslatable words which has no adequate Hungarian equivalent, since Hungarian has one word (“kép”) for “image” and “picture” (and often for “painting”, too). In English, picture is the more colloquial word, referring always to visual representations and to the physical, material nature of these representations (pictures hanging on the wall, pictures in books, magazines etc);
image, a more abstract word, adopted and widely used in literary and cultural studies, has a broader range and variety of meanings:
it refers to visual as well as verbal representations; e.g.we can talk of images of women in the Western imagination. This is more or less synonymous with “representations of women”: they include women characters in painting, film, literature, and also the representations of women in philosophy, medical science, etc. Another example: a perfect image (that is, representation) of total happiness and satisfaction is the baby suckling at its mother’s breast. In this sense, “image” is largely synonymous with “representation”. To make things clearer, perhaps one could say that all images (both verbal or visual) are representations that appeal to our senses, that is, representations that present their object in visual terms, even if they are texts (for instance, when er are reading novels or plays we usually create visual images of the characters and setting). Every image is a representation, while not every representation is an image: “representation” also includes articles, dictionary entries, many representations that do not appeal to our senses. So if we read about a suckling baby, that is an image even if it is not a picture but a verbal description/representation. But if we read statistics about breastfeeding babies, that is a representation but not an image.
it is what is conveyed by the Hungarian “imázs”: the public impression made by someone (e.g. the the image of a company or a political party);
imagery (kb. “képvilág”): the (thematics, style, atmosphere, etc) of images in a particular text, author, or theme. E.g. the imagery of Yeats, of Radnóti’s war poems; the imagery of car commercials; the imagery of love would include frequently recurring images, metaphors etc in texts about love
referentiality (“referencialitás”): the ability of language to refer to the world, the belief that words refer to things outside language. E.g. Twentieth-century philosophy and literature began to question simple referentiality.