Géza Kállay, scholar of Shakespeare and alumnus dies at 58
Fulbright Hungary is sad to announce that Géza Kállay, a full professor at the Department of English Studies, School of English and American Studies, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest, an authority on early modern English drama, primarily Shakespeare, died at his home in Budapest on Friday, Nov. 17, after a suspected heart attack. He was 58.
A sparkling essayist, Kállay wrote on philosophy and literature, the history of British drama; literary theory; (post)analytic philosophy and hermeneutics (Wittgenstein, Cavell, Ricoeur); Renaissance philosophy; East- and Central-European comparative literature.
One of his favourite course was the Drama and Theatre in order to span the gap between the point of view of the living theatre and the theoretical approach to dramatic works, the latter being typical of faculties of art.
Kállay received his M.A. in English Literature and Linguistics; in Hungarian Literature and Linguistics, and in General and Applied Linguistics from ELTE in 1984. He earned a Ph.D. at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium in 1996, but had already begun teaching at ELTE from 1984.
He was an alumni of the Fulbright Program first on a research scholarship to Harvard University AY 1994-1995 and later as a visiting Fulbright professor of literature and philosophy, University of California, Santa Cruz AY 2004-2005.
He was a legendary teacher and mentor of graduate and doctoral students helping to shape a generation of scholarship and a network of friendship and camaraderie and was an indefatigable promoter of the cause of English Studies in Hungary and abroad, always ready to extend assistance, advice, and insight to all.
Kállay served as Head of the Doctoral Program in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature and Culture at ELTE from 2010 and was Head of the Doctoral School in Literary Studies and former Director of the School of English and American Studies, ELTE.
Kállay was born in Budapest. He is survived by her wife Katalin G. Kállay and daughters, Zsuzsanna, Eszter and Mária.
