A 18. századi Franciaország magyarságképének gyökerei
The Origins of the Image of Hungary in 18th-century France

Summary/Abstract: Using the myth of the “unremembered Hungary” formulated by János Batsányi at the beginning of the 19th century, the article makes an attempt to show how the image of Hungary and Hungarian history changed in modern France. First, the author systematizes the information base that was available for the contemporary French reader. It is established that the knowledge about Hungary in the century of the Enlightenment primarily stemmed from historical bibliographies, travel diaries and historical geographies often inherited from the 16–17th centuries. As a result, it teemed with the (still uncorrected) mistakes of the previous centuries and mainly used stereotypes. While analyzing the various types of sources, the author lists particular works as well, so the paper can be read as an annotated bibliography of the Enlightenment image of Hungary. It is worth pointing out that this is the first article in Hungary to define the characteristic features of one of the most popular genres of the 17–19th centuries, the historicalgeographical dictionary and its place in the philosophical culture of the Enlightenment.

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