Literary prizes as indicators of changing concepts of cultural policy. A case study from Socialist Hungary

The paper introduces a part of a larger research project, conducted within the frames of a doctoral thesis. The main goal of the thesis is to trace the conceptual developments of Hungarian literary policy during the short 20th century, a period of fundamental political and social changes, by using state awarded literary prizes as indicators. In the following, the significance of literary prizes will first be outlined from a cultural-political and literary-sociological point of view, then one of the prizes analysed in the research, the Kossuth-Prize, as well as some sample results will be presented in detail.