GENRE HYBRIDITY, SELF-DISCOVERY AND TRAUMA: ANDREA TOMPA’S THE HANGMAN’S HOUSE

• Authors: Balogh Magdolna
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Andrea Tompa’s novel A hóhér háza (2010; The Hangman’s House, 2021) gives insight into a teenage girl’s coming of age during the last decades of the Ceauşescu regime. Recounting the story of three generations of a Transylvanian intelligentsia family, from the 1940s until the fall of the dictatorship in 1989, the novel depicts all the crucial moments of 20th-century Transylvanian history. At its crux stands a journey of self-discovery, which gains meaning in the context of the family history. This duality is reflected in the hybridity of the novel’s genre. Tompa’s work is of a hybrid genre that, in addition to the dominant presence of the autobiographical novel, encompasses elements of the Bildungsroman and the family novel. Self-discovery and family history are joined together in the protagonist’s character, as the traumatic experiences of the family past become crucial parts of the protagonist’s self-knowledge and personality through post-memory.

Keywords

EN

TRAUMA; POSTMEMORY; AUTOBIOGRAFICAL NOVEL; FAMILY HISTORY; TRANSYLVANIA; ANDREA TOMPA

• Publisher: Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: World Literature Studies
• Year: 2023
• Volume: 15
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 83 – 95

Contributors

author

Balogh Magdolna

• HUN-REN RCH, Institute for Literary Studies, Ménesi út 11-13, 1118 Budapest, Hungary

• https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3398-7799