Women writers and the possibility of a women's literary tradition in Transylvanian Hungarian literature

Within the regional literary canon of Transylvanian Hungarian literature, female authors had a marginal position during the last century, as a quantitative methodology can show. The objective of the paper is to point out the structural dimensions of this marginalization, through exploring patterns in the reception of women authors, and characteristics of the literary field of Transylvanian Hungarian literature. The question is whether thematic or genre issues, the prestige of certain literary and cultural forms (like memoirs, children's literature, theatre etc.) affected during the past century the canonical position of female authors. The analysis outlines a possible structure of a women's literary tradition.