Péter Dávidházi - Curriculum Vitae#

Studies

I studied at Loránd Eötvös University, Budapest, from 1968 to 1973, majoring in English and Hungarian literatures and linguistics. In the academic year 1977-1978 I studied nineteenth-century literature and criticism at the University of Sussex, England.

Degrees

University Doctorate in 1977; CSc (Candidate of Science, the former Hungarian equivalent of a PhD) in 1989; DSc (Academy Doctor of Science) in 1994; Habilitation at Loránd Eötvös University, Budapest, in 1996; Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2010.

Posts

Since 1973 I have been teaching English poetry (mainly 18th ang 19th centuries), Shakespeare studies, and modern English and American criticism at the Department (and PhD School) of English Literature, Loránd Eötvös University, Budapest. Simultaneously, since 1985, I have been working as a full-time researcher at the Institute for Literary Studies, a research institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 1989 I was appointed head of the Department of 19th-Century Literature at the institute, and I have been working in that position ever since. In 2003 I taught an MA course at the University of California, Irvine, on „Alexander Pope and English Philosophical Poetry”. From 1998 to 2003 I was a representative of Academy Doctors in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2002 I was elected a member of the advisory board of the biannual Shakespeare conferences in Stratford-upon-Avon. From 2003 to 2009 I was the Hungarian delegate to the Standing Committee for the Humanities, of the European Science Foundation, from 2007 to 2009 as member of the Core Group.

Books

(a) In English:
(1) The Romantic Cult of Shakespeare: Literary Reception in Anthropological Perspective. Basingstoke, London, New York: Macmillan Press and St. Martin's Press, 1998, pp. XIV, 240. (Romanticism in Perspective: Texts, Cultures, Histories. Series editors Marilyn Gaull and Stephen Prickett.)
(2) Literature and Its Cults: an Anthropological Approach / La littérature et ses cultes: Approche anthropologique. Eds. Péter Dávidházi and Judit Karafiáth. Budapest, Argumentum, 1994.
(3) Shakespeare and Hungary. Shakespeare Yearbook, Vol. 6. Eds. Holger Klein and Péter Dávidházi, 1996, Lewiston, Queenston, Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press.

(b) In Hungarian:
(1) Isten másodszülöttje. A magyar Shakespeare-kultusz természetrajza. (”God's Second Born”: The Anatomy of the Hungarian Cult of Shakespeare.) Budapest: Gondolat Könyvkiadó, 1989, pp. VIII, 377.
(2) Hunyt mesterünk. Arany János kritikusi öröksége. (Our Dead Master: János Arany's Critical Legacy.) Budapest: Argumentum Kiadó, 1992, pp. 417.; second, revised edition 1994.
(3) Per passivam resistentiam. Változatok hatalom és írás témájára. (Per passivam resistentiam: Variations on the Theme of Power and Writing.) Budapest: Ar-gumentum Kiadó, 1998, pp. 409.
(4) Egy nemzeti tudomány születése. Toldy Ferenc és a magyar irodalomtörténet. (The Birth of a National Discipline: Ferenc Toldy and Hungarian Literary History) Bp., Akadémiai Kiadó, Universitas Kiadó, 2004. pp. 1028.
(5) Menj, vándor: Swift sírfelirata és a hagyományrétegződés, (Go, Traveller: Swift’s Epitaph and the Strata of a Tradition) Pécs, Pro Pannonia Kiadói Ala-pítvány, 2009 (Thienemann-előadások, sorozatszerkesztő: Nagy Imre, 4), 201 p.

Awards

One of my books, Hunyt mesterünk. Arany János kritikusi öröksége (Our Dead Master: János Arany's Critical Legacy), published in 1992 by Argumentum Publishing House, was awarded the Hungarian Book-of-the-Year Prize in 1993. I was awarded the Oltványi Prize in 1987, the Tibor Déry Prize in 1992, the Alföld Prize in 1997, and the Dezső Kosztolányi Prize in 1997, the Tarnai Prize in 2007, the Toldy Ferenc Prize in 2010, all of them for publications in literary history and criticism. In 2006 I was awarded the Széchenyi Prize, the highest Hungarian award for scholars and scientists.

Scholarships and Fellowships

In 1985-1986 I worked for nine months as a visiting research fellow at the University of California, Irvine. In 1989 I spent three months in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washing-ton, as a Folger-Soros Fellow. In the summers of 1993, 1995, 1998, and 2000, British Academy scholarships made it possible for me to do research in London, hosted by the Institute of Germanic Studies and by Birkbeck College, in 1995 that was complemented by a month in Trinity College, Cambridge. After the publication of my book The Romantic Cult of Shakespeare: Literary Reception in Anthropological Perspective (Macmillan Press, London; St Martin's Press, New York) in 1998 I was appointed Honorary Fellow of the International Centre for Romantic Studies at the University of Glasgow. In the academic year 2002/2003 I was a Fulbright visiting scholar at Columbia University, followed by a short-term fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library.