User:Kenjakun/Géza Kállay

Géza Kállay (1959-2017) was a Hungarian literary historian, full professor, writer, and in particular, a Shakespeare scholar. His affinity for analyzing the interactions between literature and philosophy played key role in how he approached the works of Shakespeare. Géza Kállay was a proponent of advocating for English Studies both abroad and in Hungary.

Early Life and Education

Géza Kállay was born on the 20th of November 1959. His birthplace is Budapest. He got married to Katalin G. Kállay in 1987. Géza Kállay’s wife is the daughter of István Géher, the late professor and poet. She is a renowned literary historian whose teaching career is linked to Károli Gáspár Reformed University. He was survived by his wife (Katalin G. Kállay), and their three daughters, Zsuzsanna, Eszter, and Mária.

In 1984 he received his M.A. in English Literature and Linguistics, Hungarian Literature and Linguistics, as well as General and Applied Linguistics at Eötvös Loránd University. Not shortly afterwards he distinguished himself with evocative lectures and his research on linguistics and the philosophy of language. By 1984, he was already teaching at Eötvös Loránd University.

In 1986, he was appointed assistant professor in the Department of English at Eötvös Loránd University and continued his research on literary history. From 1991 to 1992 he took up a research position at the Catholic University of Leuven. The opportunity to study in Belgium from 1991 to 1992 was awarded to him by the Soros scholarship. In 1994, Géza Kállay was appointed associate professor in the Department of English Studies at Eötvös Loránd University’s then-established Institute of English-American Studies. He remains an alumnus of the Fulbright Program that afforded him the possibility to study at Harvard University from 1994 to 1995 with a research scholarship.

In 1996, he obtained his Ph.D. from the Catholic University of Leuven and defended his doctoral thesis there. His thesis dealt with the relationship between literature and philosophy with special attention paid to a Wittgensteinian reading of Shakespeare.

Career

Géza Kállay’s main teaching and interests consisted of William Shakespeare, English Renaissance drama and in relation to it, drama theory. Moreover, his incredibly broad knowledge and substantial philosophical insight qualified him as an expert in other areas of Anglo-American literature and culture. He fulfilled teaching positions at both Eötvös Loránd University and Károli Gáspár Reformed University.

In 1998, he was appointed to the position of associate professor at Eötvös Loránd University. From 2004 to 2005, he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to teach visiting lectures in literature and philosophy at the University of California in Santa Cruz. Subsequently, in 2007, he became a full professor at Eötvös Loránd University.

Géza Kállay served as the Director of the Eötvös Loránd University’s Institute of English-American studies from 2002 to 2006 and 2010. From 2010, he provided his services as the Head of the Doctoral Program in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature and Culture at Eötvös Loránd University. Among his diverse directorial roles, he was also Head of the Doctoral School of Literary Studies and the former Director of the School of English and American Studies at Eötvös Loránd University. From 2012 to 2017 he fulfilled the position of Director of the Doctoral Program in Early Modern English at Eötvös Loránd University. His interests ranged from literary translation to fiction and drama.

Géza Kállay was the director of several research programs, and regularly gave lectures and workshops. Furthermore, with his doctoral students he had organized two major academic conferences at the Anglo-American Institute in the last two years before his death.

He enjoyed a fruitful publishing career having written numerous books, translations, and more than 50 of his articles and studies appeared in journals both domestically and internationally. His written works centered on various topics including philosophy and literature, the history of British drama, literary theory, (post) analytic philosophy and hermeneutics in particular Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Ricoeur, Renaissance philosophy, and East-and Central European Comparative literature. One of his favorite courses was drama and theater because it demonstrates how to bridge the gap between the point of view of the living theater and the theoretical approach to dramatic works, the latter being what faculties of art tend to use. Géza Kállay was considered an authority on Modern English drama with a focus on William Shakespeare. He was a vocal promoter of the cause of English Studies in Hungary and abroad.

He was a member of the Hungarian Shakespeare Association, the Doctoral Council Association, as well as ESSE, and HUSSE. Géza Kállay spent his free time as an English interpreter and hosted lectures in the Mountain Region’s Salon (Hegyvidéki Szalon).

He passed away three days before his 58th birthday on the 17th of November 2017.

Research Area

Géza Kállay was a professor and researcher of William Shakespeare’s oeuvre. Most of the courses he taught as a university professor related entirely or in some form to Shakespeare. Concerning Shakespeare, his chief focus was his tragedies. Often, he combined his twin passions for Shakespeare and the interplay between literature and philosophy, for instance in his book by the name of “Can We Say More?” (Mondhatunk-e többet? - in Hungarian).

In the first two sections of the volume all his essays revolve around William Shakespeare. He specifically concentrates on the dramas Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, Richard II, and Richard III. Shakespeare is put and analyzed in a philosophical context and the dramas are combined with the philosophical works of Kierkegaard, Levinas, Laszlo Tengelyi, Wittgenstein, and, Stanley Cavell. Géza Kállay, in his book, ponders why one needs philosophy to comment on a literary text, he swiftly provides an answer suggesting that Shakespeare’s texts provide many ways to elucidate the relation between literature and philosophy. Kállay proposes three such methods. One being the impact of late Renaissance philosophy on Shakespeare. Secondly, an additional level of significance to the text can be conveyed through arguments centered on philosophy. Thirdly, it is possible to observe and examine how diverse philosophers interpret Shakespeare. These two sections further demonstrate how intricate and interwoven the connections between philosophical and literary discourses are. A reviewer even laments that the book had not been published in English as it would have made an indispensable addition to work which examines Shakespeare from a philosophical angle.

His essay titled “The (new and old) metaphysical reading of Shakespeare” was featured in The Routledge Companion to Shakespeare and Philosophy. In which, he is described as someone who “has published extensively, in Hungarian and in English, on Shakespeare, Wittgenstein, Cavell, and the relationship between literature and philosophy.” Additionally, in 2014, he translated William Shakespeare’s Macbeth to Hungarian.

Selected Works

• Nem puszta szó - Not a Mere Word (essays, Liget, 1996)
• Nem puszta tett - Not a Mere Deed (essays, Liget, 1999)
• Nem puszta kép - Not a Mere Image (collection of essays, Liget, 2002)
• A nyelv határai - The Limits of Language (Shakespeare Studies, Liget, 2004)
• A nyelv határai -The Limits of Language (Shakespeare Studies, second revised edition, Liget, 2006)
• Melyik Erasmus Kávéházban - Which Erasmus Cáfe (short stories, Liget Workshop Foundation, 2007)
• Személyes jelentés - Personal Meaning (philosophical studies, Liget, 2007)
• Semmi vérjel - No Blood Mark (textual experiments, Liget Workshop Foundation, 2008)
• És most: beszélj! Nyelvfilozófia, dráma, elbeszélés - And now: speak! Philosophy of language, drama, narrative (Liget Workshop Foundation, Bp., 2013).

Awards and Grants

• 2012-2016: grant provided by OTKA (meaning Országos Tudományos Kutatási Alap” = National Fund for Scientific Research, Hungary). Géza Kállay was head of the Research Program and editor in chief of the volume: The Hungarian History of English Literature.
• 2009-2013: grant provided by OTKA (meaning Országos Tudományos Kutatási Alap” = National Fund for Scientific Research, Hungary) Géza Kállay was head of the Research Program, and editor of the 3-volume series titled The Critical History of Renaissance Drama. The project aimed to introduce crucial texts relating to the legacy of Shakespeare and the Elizabethan theater to the Hungarian audience.  -2004–2005 (9 months): Fulbright teaching grant to the University of California, Santa Cruz
• 2002 (August): seminar-participant at the 21^st International Shakespeare Conference, Stratford-on-Avon, “Shakespeare and Comedy” (in the seminar “The Nature of Complex Words”, led by Prof. Jonathan Hope)
• 2002 (6 days): British Council Grant to the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-on-Avon to the Seminar “Teaching Shakespeare at the University”
• 2001–2002: “Klebelsberg Kuno” Scholarship for the Research Program “The phenomenon of tragedy” (with András Kiséry)
• 1998-2002: “Bolyai” Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest (Philosophy and Literature)
• 1998-2001: “OTKA” Research and Short-term Travelling Scholarship of the Hungarian Ministry of Education (Philosophy and Literature – Leuven)
• 1995 (6 months): Fulbright Research Scholarship to Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., USA (working with Professor Stanley Cavell at the Department of Philosophy; Emerson Hall; two lectures at Peninsula College, Port Angeles, WA
• 1993–1994 (15 months): Research Grant of the Central European University and the Open Society Institute, Budapest-Prague (finishing the Ph.D. on the application of Wittgensteinean philosophy to the analysis of Shakespearean drama)
• 1991–1992 (9 months): Research Grant of the Hungarian Soros-Foundation to the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium (philosophy and literature, mostly Wittgenstein and Shakespeare)
• 1984 (1 month): British Council Scholarship to London, England (teaching English as a foreign language)

External references

• Géza Kállay's publication list

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