Network analysis of the twentieth-century Hungarian literary ecosystem in Transylvania

Molnár, E. and Csala, D. (2021) Network analysis of the twentieth-century Hungarian literary ecosystem in Transylvania. Teruleti Statisztika, 61 (5). pp. 631-660. ISSN 0018-7828

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Abstract

This study describes the Transylvanian literary ecosystem by analysing the relationships between the actors present in literary life. The authors seek the answer to the question whether the oeuvre and perception of writers and poets were defined by their relationships, or rather, whether their relationships were formed by their grouping along common ideas and attitudes. The research investigated the following: how writers and poets related to each other, in which journals they published together, and to which literary societies they belonged. As a data source, the authors used the 5 volumes of the Hungarian literary lexicon in Romania. This study analyses the compiled network using network theory procedures. By calculating the degree of closeness centrality and betweenness centrality, the research concludes whether there are dominant actors, journals, societies in the Transylvanian literary life that were progressive constituents of the development of intellectual life. This research is interdisciplinary and groundbreaking, because it approaches the sociological topic from the perspective of network analysis. It is the first research to formally describe the social structure, whose basic unit, in the present case, is the group of Hungarian writers and poets in Transylvania.