Luxus v uhorskej literatúre do konca 13. storočia
Luxury in the Hungarian Literature to the End of the Thirteenth Century

Summary/Abstract: Main focus of this paper is set to the analysis of the Hungarian literature in the Árpadian era in order to find the information about the unusual and luxurious goods that the nobility used in their everyday life or as the means of representation. Connected to this is the lifestyle, marked by the social prestige or noblesness. This mentality is based on the ownership of these various luxurious commodities, either movable or real, or it could be vice-versa, meaning that the ownership of these luxurious goods affected and formed the mentality and the social status of the aristocracy. People could value the luxurious goods either for their high price and artwork or either for their symbolic value. And the symbolic value of the object was given to it by the literature. The goods in the literary works, such as hagiographic legends, chronicles or deeds, were influenced by the real-world goods, as well as the real-world goods were influenced by the symbolic value that literature gave them. That is the power of the literature and its author: it can affect its reader or listener in the way he desire, and the whole society with it. This paper will try to provide some new view on the narrative sources, when identifying the luxurious objects and their role in medieval culture and society.

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