•  
  •  
 

Abstract

Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, in his paper, "Imre Kertész's Nobel Prize, Public Discourse, and the Media," discusses aspects of media coverage in German-, Hungarian-, and English-language newspapers and magazines of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded to Imre Kertész. The perspective of Tötösy's analysis is to gauge the importance and impact of media coverage comparatively in the three cultural and media landscapes. Based on selected examples from newspapers and magazines with an international scope, Tötösy argues that the reception of Kertész's Nobel Prize suggests the convergence of the media (as the message) and the contents of the message within public discourse, resulting in Kertész's role as a public intellectual despite his reluctance to assume this role. Tötösy demonstrates that the media discourse reveals significant differences in the reception of the prize, pointing to different stages in democratic values in the context of the relevance of the Holocaust today. In addition, the media reception reveals how far a particular society accepts (Germany, the USA, and Canada) or rejects (Hungary) the historical relevance of Kertész's work as unique in the literature of the Holocaust.

Share

COinS