Eger Journal of English Studies

Angelika REICHMANN, Albert VERMES — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Singular "They"

Viktória PESTI — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

This paper explores the morphosyntactic features of the phenomenon ‘singular “they”’. It distinguishes between ‘epicene’ and ‘non–binary “they”’. The analysis draws on the pronoun’s historical development, Agreement and Concord theory, the distribution of the third–person singular inflection “–s”, morphological structure analysis, and morphosyntactic analyses. The findings support that both types of ‘singular “they”’ are felicitous to use in discourse.

The Encounter of an Elderly Man and a Young Woman in Julia Margaret Cameron’s Photography

Franciska LINSZKY — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879), one of the most renowned Victorian photographers, produced innovative photographs that attest to her penchant for beauty. Her legacy not only comprises portraits of eminent contemporaries, but she also ventured to create her own staged photographs inspired by literature. Friar Laurence and Juliet, Prospero and Miranda, and Vivien and Merlin bear a striking resemblance and depict a rather similar theme: the relationship of an elderly man and a young woman. The paper explores the connection between these characters by interpreting the visual language, and unveiling the underlying significance of their touches and power relations.

Angela Carter in a Subversive Dialogue With the Brothers Grimm

Katalin DOMJÁN — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

This paper examines the complex roles of mother figures in Angela Carter’s subversive fairy tales. The first part contextualises the genre’s evolution, the emergence of subversive voices, and Carter’s strategies in rewriting canonical tales. Special focus is given to the traditional portrayal of mother figures, and to their role in promoting the patriarchal ideology. The second part examines how Carter challenges the Grimms’ agenda through her rewritten mother figures in the “The Snow Child” and “The Bloody Chamber”. This study aims to offer a contribution to the question of mother figures’ role in shaping the heroine’s character and journey.

“She is also God”

Anna SZIRÁK — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

The paper offers a close reading of Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement, through the lens of girlhood. Known for its twist which reveals one of the main characters, Briony Tallis, as being writer of the novel, Atonement calls attention to its own fictional nature, while simultaneously creating micro images of entering and controlling which form Briony as a godlike narrator who enacts violence on her creations. The paper analyzes these images and considers storytelling as a girlish act with the motif of intrusion. It relies on McEwan criticism and girlhood studies to make sense of the girl as menacing, central figure.

“For the First Time in My Life, I Don’t Know What to Believe”: Conspiracy and Gender in The X-Files

Dóra BUSI — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

The X-Files, from its representation of monsters, aliens, and the government, to its engagement with gender roles, has been thoroughly analysed by scholars and fans alike in the past thirty years. This study aims to tie two elements of the show together: conspiracy theories and gender. Examining the early mythopoeia of the series, I argue that creating conspiracy theories might be read as a primarily masculine prerogative on the show, and that Dana Scully is not fully empowered to join her partner in conspiracy theorizing due to her position as a woman at the FBI.

Beyond the Flesh

Haddel Ramez ENDEWY — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological framework of embodied
perception, this paper examines Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis (2000) and Sasha
Waltz’s Körper and noBody (early 2000s), focusing on how they destabilise the
body’s ontological boundaries. By employing Merleau-Ponty’s concepts of the
lived body, the study explores how both works challenge conventional binaries
between self/world and subject/object. Kane’s text reconfigures psychosis as an
alternative mode of being-in-the-world, where hallucinatory visions intensify the
body–world dialectic rather than rupturing it. In contrast, Waltz’s choreography
dissolves corporeal boundaries, revealing the reversibility of perception and the
intersubjective nature of embodiment. Despite their divergent media – textbased
theatre and movement-based dance – both Kane and Waltz converge on
a foundational proposition: perception is inherently participatory, perpetually
entangled with the world’s Becoming. The paper also integrates Drew Leder’s
concept of the absent body to analyse how both artists explore the ecstatic
dissolution of the body, where disappearance becomes a mode of transcendence
and reconfiguration. Through phenomenological analysis, this study demonstrates
how theatre and dance enact phenomenological principles, blurring the boundaries
between physicality and abstraction to redefine corporeal experience.

Spectres of Reason

Miklós Gergő SZINTAI-MAJOR — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

The Seven Labours of Hercules

Tamás TUKACS — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Shaw Through the Lens of a Contemporary Feminist

Andrea Nikolett MAJOROS — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

“A little bit of every woman’s rage”

Fruzsina PAPP — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Age Is Just a Number... Or Is It?

Haddel Ramez ENDEWY — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Dystopian Theory Reinvented

Ayman ALMOMANI — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Posthuman Pages, Human Questions

Taha ALSARHAN — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100