Narrative forms do not develop in a purely autonomous way. Because they are deeply embedded in a rich web of cultural, social, and economic practices, the focus of research is on the complex interplay between narrative techniques, publication networks, and modes of reading, as well as on the role of their mutual interactions in the formation of European Modernism. To achieve these objectives, the classical narratology approach must be broadened by recently proposed conceptual frameworks for the analysis of possible worlds, transmedia storytelling, and the cognitive processes of reading. Thus, modernist narrative trends can be described as a dynamic field of reflection and construction, world-making, and interpretative experience.

Literary modernism can be characterized by several spatial orientations that occurred around the turn of 19th and 20th century. Hungarian literary trends can be situated and interpreted along the modernist axis of center and periphery, in the context of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and according to their relations to Western and Eastern European writers (from Dickens and Hoffmann to Turgenev and Chekhov). These complex geopolitical and geo-cultural orientations induce a conceptual shift from the spatially bound forms of regional literature to a wider, multilayered network of literary works. This transformation sheds light on the process through which the narrative patterns of spatial representation are being reorganized in the modern field of Hungarian literature.

The idea of “two cultures” (C. P. Snow) created a distinct separation between the arts and the sciences by disregarding the robust channels of communication between these fields. By revealing the transmission—as well as the transformation—of ideas between scientists and writers, it is possible to better understand the relation of literature to social modernization and technological progress. Thus, the main goal of research is to describe cases of interaction in detail and to situate these instances of connection more systematically in the larger context of modernist attitudes and institutions. These results may ultimately reveal aspects of modern literature that have so far remained hidden by modernist misconceptions of the stark difference between the natural sciences and the humanities.