I. EDUCATION
The Faculty of Arts at the University of Miskolc provides training programmes at each level of the three cycles of the Bologna-type higher education: BA Programme in Hungarian Studies, MA Programme in Education, MA Programme in Hungarian Studies and also the Double Major Teacher Training with various combinations of majors. After the MA Programmes or the Teacher Training, our most talented students have the chance to advance further in our Doctoral (PhD) Programme.
Students graduating from our BA, MA and Teacher Training programmes can find employment in various fields: beside the traditional pedagogical or scholarly positions, and occupations directly related to the degree, our students can flexibly enter civil service; work for the institutions of the European Union, or business companies requiring language, communication and analyzing skills; for the media; for the institutions of the state, the local government, and the civil cultural sphere; they can act as project managers, and carry out general organizing tasks.
In literary studies, the aim of the training programme is to provide the students with reliable knowledge about the history of world as well as Hungarian literature. Students get to know the historically changing social conditions and institutions of literature as well as the mode of being of literary works of art. They acquire basic philological, rhetorical, prosodic, poetical, and hermeneutic knowledge required to interpret literary phenomena. They are trained to regard national and world literature in a double focus.
The training programme in linguistics focuses on the nature and historical specificities of the Hungarian language. Having acquired a stable theoretical knowledge in linguistics, the students learn about the methods of linguistic research, the grammar of the Hungarian language, the laws of linguistic structures, the historically and sociologically specific forms of language usage, and the different approaches to linguistic phenomena. They achieve a good knowledge of linguistic skills in order to express themselves elaborately in speaking as well as in writing. Our students receive the knowledge and skills that enable them to become teachers in various types of schools.
The Hungarian training programme is organized by the Institute of Hungarian Language and Literature at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Miskolc. The institute includes the following departments, which also act as workshops of their specific fields:
· Department of Hungarian Literary Studies
· Hungarian Linguistics Department
II. SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
1. The Theory and Practice of Textology
Ever since literary and historical studies came into being, special emphasis has been put on the text, which serves as both the most important tool and object of research. In accordance with this, both disciplines have been focusing on exploring and publishing texts as sources from the very beginning, while also exploring and solving textological problems related to texts and their academic publishing.
Soon after the establishment of the Faculty of Arts in Miskolc, there arose a need for a central doctoral school devoted to textology, which would cooperate with Hungarian and international enterprises in textology and serve as a practical training centre for experts who accomplish practical work based on theory.
Defining and teaching the norms of text analysis, textology, and philology, the valid forms of reflected text definitions, developing and applying text graphic principles, the stemmatic graphic issues of text generation together with the core text apparatus, notes and commentaries of critical text editing, source publications, genetic and electronic (digital) editions mean the basic issues of Hungarian human sciences and pre-conditions for co-operating with international institutions of textology and workshops of philology. Publishing the lifeworks of classics of Hungarian literature with authentic texts on a high academic level together with the thematic and chronologic chrestomathies and corpora of Hungarian literary texts form an essential part of fostering and conserving Hungarian cultural heritage. Training a new generation of professional experts to implement the task of editing and publishing is of great importance.
The Doctoral School of Literary Studies at the University of Miskolc is an especially suitable institution for text analysis–textology-centered post-graduate education. The doctoral programme on textology–dating back more than 20Pro years–is available only at the University of Miskolc, with a staff of outstanding experts in the field.
The doctoral programme in Textology (today called Classic Textology) was set up by Prof. Dr. Péter Kulcsár in as early as 1996, and has been headed by Prof. Dr. Gábor Kecskeméti since 2004, who also acts as the head of the Committee on Textology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS). The students taking part in this programme primarily study texts from the early modern period and the 18th–19th centuries.
The programme on the 20th century was set up and has been headed by Prof. Dr. Lóránt Kabdebó to date, and in the course of the programme, he and the students under his guidance have published an authentic edition of the complete works of the Miskolc-born author Lőrinc Szabó, a great number of his other writings together with his translations, notes and memoranda, letters, the documents related to him, and the reference books necessary to study all these (bibliographies, library catalogue).
The programme in (Cultural) Translation Studies is the youngest programme of the doctoral school, and was set up by Prof. Dr. András Kappanyos. The doctoral school gives a proper backgound for the deep and intense study of the theoretical and practical questions of translation, comparative translation and the history of translation.
The three programmes together make up a research centre of post-graduate studies focusing on textology, which covers texts from the 16th–20th centuries, analyzed from a historical point of view, and also based on linguistic and textological theories.
2. Issues of Generic- and Intellectual History in Hungarian Literary History
Our literary historian colleagues deal with many significant generic- and intellectual historical questions of the early modern age. Prof. Dr. János Heltai organized, for the first time in Hungary, the critical analysis of denominational debates as well as compiled, with the help of his students, a database for theological debates. Prof. Dr. Gábor Kecskeméti and Dr. Réka Tasi are researching the history of sermons. Three decades ago Prof. Dr. István Kilián initiated the research of the history of the theatre and drama, and he established a workshop for the publishing and the analysis of 18th century school dramas. All of the researchers above also focus on the studies of young Hungarians in foreign universities in the early modern age, and investigate the history not only of literature, but of literary thinking.
Dr. László Gyapay, Dr. Tibor Porkoláb, and Dr. Réka Tasi published or cooperated in the publication of critical editions of the collected works of classic Hungarian authors (Gábor Dayka, Benedek Virág, Ferenc Kölcsey, József Lévay) from the long literary historical period lasting from the Enlightenment of the 18th century to the end of the 19th century.