Peripheralities: "Minor" Literatures, Women’s Literature, and Adrienne Orosz de Csicser’s Novels

Abstract

Abstract: In "Peripheralities: 'Minor' Literatures, Women’s Literature, and Adrienne Orosz de Csicser’s Novels" Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek discusses events surrounding Adrienne Orosz de Csicser’s (1878-1934) work. For the contextualization of the events Tötösy de Zepetnek employs his own framework of "comparative cultural studies" here applied to "minor literatures" (i.e., peripheral) and women’s literature and Shunqing Cao’s "variation theory." While Orosz’s novels are not considered exceptional, the author achieved notoriety after locked up in a mental institution. In addition to three published novels, in an unpublished novel (excerpts of which she read at various literary and social gatherings) Orosz narrates her love affair with a Roman Catholic bishop. Knowledge about her novel’s contents resulted in the bishop orchestrating Orosz’s commitment to a mental hospital. The context in which Orosz’s texts are located in is the socio-political situation in Hungarian society prior to and shortly after the First World War.