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A Hungarian Woman Writer’s Transnational Afterlife in the Digital Era: Renée Erdős (1879–1956)

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Transnational Perspectives on Artists’ Lives

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Life Writing ((PSLW))

Abstract

Menyhért’s chapter looks at the transnational element in life stories and canonisation processes in connection with the transnational digital ‘afterlife’ of a writer. The chapter describes the case of Hungarian writer Renée Erdős (1879–1956). Menyhért wrote a bestselling fictional biography entitled A Free Woman (2016) about Erdős’s fascinating life. The fictional biography served as a starting point for an online trans-border network of researchers, family members of Erdős, other writers, translators and readers in several countries. The chapter enquires into what impact a transnational afterlife has on the canonisation of a woman writer marginalised in the national context: how the emergence of new, digital, trans-border, easily accessible communication channels can free institutionalised nation-based canon-forming structures and make life writing partly a participatory network activity.

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Menyhért, A. (2020). A Hungarian Woman Writer’s Transnational Afterlife in the Digital Era: Renée Erdős (1879–1956). In: Rensen, M., Wiley, C. (eds) Transnational Perspectives on Artists’ Lives. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45200-1_8

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