A MAGYAR TÖRTÉNELEM IDEGEN KULTÚRTÉRBEN
HUNGARIAN HISTORY IN FOREIGN CULTURES

Author(s): Erika Bence, Ferenc Németh
Subject(s): Hungarian Literature
Published by: Scientia Kiadó
Keywords: Károly Kisfaludy; German chivalric novels; Hungarian heroic novels; Louis the Great;
Summary/Abstract: Károly Kisfaludy’s work Tihamér belongs to the Hungarian heroic novels written under the influence of German chivalric novels, at the same time being “the first modest attempt in Hungarian historical novels” (Heinrich 1907: 23.) as well as “the best Hungarian historical short story before Jósika” (Szinnyei 1911: 152). From the aspect of our study, the purposeful choice and literary structuring of the historically authentic framework (the expedition against Naples by Louis the Great of Hungary) bears great importance since with this framework – a sentimental account common and conventional in the epics of the period – novelty was introduced into contextual reading. By choosing this historical period and by its projection onto the chivalric story, it not only presents the recipient with definite genre-interpreting instructions, but it also influences the secondary levels of semantics by comparing the age of Louis the Great and the actual time of the narration: it mobilizes one of the important genre-creating aspects of the historical novel, the past-related “questioning with relation to the present”.

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