Italianistica Pannonica, the series of academic works on Italian Studies in Hungary was launched in 2014 by László Pete and István Puskás, professors of the Italian Studies Department of the Faculty of Humanities at UD.
“Our aim through Italianistica Pannonica is to provide a publication opportunity for all those who conduct research on Italian-Hungarian history and culture,” said László Pete in his welcome address.
The head of the Italian Studies Department highlighted that, with the three new volumes just published, the number of publications has now risen to six altogether.
László Pete himself is also one of the authors. His study titled Polgárháború Dél-Olaszországban. A brigantaggio és a magyar légió [Civil War in Southern Italy: The Brigantaggio and the Hungarian Legion] describes the civil war banditry during the decade between 1860 and 1870 with vivid accounts of human fates.
“The characters portrayed are almost impersonated, while the gangs of the time are described in great detail, including their weaponry, strategy and lives, as well as those of their opponents. This work is a serious historiographical analysis, with ample map supplements to help the readers in spatial orientation,” said historian György Miru, Associate Professor at the Department of Modern Hungarian History of the Institute of History, FoH, UD.
Another author, Orsolya Száraz, Assistant Professor of the Institute of Hungarian Literature and Culture at FoH, UD, also “invites” the readers to Italy. Ms. Száraz’s book titled A bűnbánat színháza. A jezsuita népmissziós prédikáció a 17-18. századi Itáliában [The Theatre of Repentance: Jesuit Popular Missionary Preaching in Italy in the 17th and 18th Centuries] is indeed a revised version of her habilitation thesis.
“This publication is the outcome of studying the handwritten letters and annual reports of the Rome-based archives of the Society of Jesus, as well as of analyzing printed sermons and a variety of other sources. On the one hand, it examines the theological texts on a rhetorical basis, while on the other hand, it also provides a picture of the missionary activity of the given period by detailing the forms and functions of repentance itself,” said Gergely Fazakas, Director of the Hungarian Institute of Literature and Cultural Studies, at the presentation of the work.
The third book was written by Bálint Takács, who had earned his doctoral degree from the University of Debrecen with a dissertation written on a similar topic. His Magyar hadifogolysors Olaszországban. Kozeschnik János őrvezető hosszú fogsága [The Fate of Hungarian Prisoners of War in Italy: The Long Captivity of Lance Corporal János Kozeschnik] was presented and reviewed by historian Róbert Barta.
The director of the Institute of History of FoH, UD, emphasized that the past decade had witnessed a new impetus in the research of World War I—the Great War—in which details of social, economic and cultural history were increasingly coming to the fore.
“Bálint Takács's book has processed all this in the presentation of an individual life story, which effort has resulted in a work of great value as a reliable source of information; one that discusses a topic hitherto unexplored,” said Róbert Barta.
The three new studies in the Italianistica Pannonica series were published by the printing house Gondolat Kiadó in 2023 and are available in bookstores, while the previous volumes of the series are also accessible online at https://italdeb.unideb.hu/italianistica-pannonica.
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