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In the study the author tries to answer questions like what we understand under the term the literature of the Enlightenment, what kind of and how many writings can fit in this category, whether all the literary creations of the period can be interpreted in the same analytical scheme, what are the time limits of the period, or who were the subjects or the actors of the Hungarian Enlightenment.
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It is well-known that one cannot really pin down regular 18th century works on the theory of language by Hungarian scholars. As Lajos Csetri’s findings show Hungarian neologism was more driven by practical motivations than the impetus of theoretical discussions. Therefore, it is quite surprising to find observations that were actually made on the theory of language and semantics; a number of such comments can be found at the most unexpected places, mostly in the forewords and comments of scientific, religious and literary works translated into Hungarian. In my paper I strive to present as many observations as possible on language in general or specifically Hungarian made by authors of Transylvania in their works published from the mid-18th century to approximately 1790.
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From the literary correspondence we can obtain knowledge about the literary tradition and the applicability of the studied period (1760–1848.) My study aims at Kazinczy’s correspondence which essentially determined the period’s scale of values; it tries to examine the texts related to the traditions of literary history. In the first place it studies the 18th-19th century reception of the inspiring poets, István Gyöngyösi and Miklós Zrínyi. The main points of my research are directed towards the tradition-concepts of the epistles: these letters are inferred as a sphere of communication of the literary standard language. The main questions of my study are: in what kind of textual corpus could the discourse about Gyöngyösi and Zrínyi be adjusted to; how can certain poets’ concepts of poetry determine the canonizing process; in what way can we apply the tradition of literary history to the examined period, and along what kind of strategies of reading is demarcated Gyöngyösi’s and Zrínyi’s place in Hungarian literary history.
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Sámuel Brassai was called the last Transylvanian polyhistor in Imre Mikó’s book. We also know about publications that use this same term for Brassai’s disciple, namely Ottó Herman who was much younger than his master and whose scholarly activities extend even to the 20th century. Sámuel Brassai, mentioned as Nestor of sciences was a peculiar figure of his century’s academic life. His all-embracing works were difficult to understand in the 1860s, and they are still hard to comprehend, since he had published his discoveries, opinion, professional findings and objections in several disciplines and languages. Exactly the disciples segregated and the professional identities differentiated in the course of the 19th century have made more difficult the treatment of the oeuvre that had been still founded upon the earlier notion of the scholar and had left the specialization out of consideration. However, this is due to the successful meeting of the scholarly personality and Brassai’s figure and socialization. His scholarly attitude didn’t hurt any disciples studied by him, but he has become strange, incomprehensible with time and on the other hand reason of cultic attitude due to the high standard of his knowledge and his efficiency. His socialization, bringing-up and confession can be standpoints of research, since all these are components of his becoming a scholar. This presentation on one hand traces this becoming through Brassai’s published writings, and on the other hand works on those sources of book history, institutional history and cultural history by which we can build up the system of both the meanings of Brassai’s status as polyhistor and the survival of this scholarly attitude in the 19th century.
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The paper focuses on those Hungarian texts of Enlightenment popular education from the late 18th century, which were written for shepherds. It was due to the concurrence of different factors that shepherds came into the limelight at the end of the 18th century, but the way they were seen was far from uniform. Some saw them through the world of the Bible as the examples of an ideal Christian conduct of life, while those Enlightenment reformers, who emphasized social usefulness, regarded them as no more than idlers. According to both camps, however, books and their training for reading could make them better. But we have to take into account at least one more shepherd image, which did not see them as „children” to be nurtured but rather, with their peculiar backwardness and oral culture, as the possessors of true knowledge. Through examples, the paper analyzes the issues raised by these books written for shepherds: the medial turn of knowledge transfer; the narrative, thematic and metaphorical resolutions for the medial paradox; and the problem of the preservation of Christian and national traditions.
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The study analyses the readers of Ferenc Faludi’s work in Transylvania.
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Judit Dukai Takács became a celebrated poet in the beginning of the 19th century via her popular poems. She was compared to Sappho, significant figures of the contemporary literary life appreciated her works, and pleaded for her friendship. Even in her life she was „chanted” by József Katona, Ádám Pálóczi Horváth, Gábor Döbrentei, József Elek Horváth, József Dessewffy and Dániel Berzsenyi. In this paper we consider the manuscripts from the Department of Manuscript and Rare Books of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which can be related to her reception. In particular, we focus on letters changed by contemporary authors such as József Elek Horváth, Dániel Berzsenyi, Ferenc Kazinczy, Gábor Döbrentei.
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The poetic representation of scenery can be found already in Dávid Baróti Szabó`s first book published in 1777. Later the scenery represented grow far beyond the tools learnt from conventional Latinist literature and are sometimes filled with allegorical subject matter. The paper to be delivered focuses on these hidden (and sometimes „realistic”) descriptions, on the appearance of poetic thoughts. Baróti`s poetic attempts, however, are not without predecessors.
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Dávid Baróti Szabó, born in Transylvania, co-edited the Magyar Museum printed in Kassa with two prominent poets of the era; János Batsányi and Ferenc Kazinczy. They set the example for successful cooperation between people of different political views, from different generations, in editing a literary journal of outstanding quality. Baróti Szabó was one of the first in Hungarian literary history to support himself from his literary activities, developing in him the modern writer’s consciousness. The lecture and essay analyses the symbolism in Baróti’s poetry. His significance in the history of Hungarian literature springs not, however, from his symbolism, but from his metrics. Like all educated people of his time, he knew antique poetry well. He considered it his task to establish the metrical verse in Hungarian poetry. Kazinczy Ferenc, determinig figure of the era’s literary canon, greeted with enthusiasm volume upon volume of poetry versed in hexameters, published at the time due to Baróti’s influence.
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The role that literary texts play in social communication is an increasingly discussed subject in scholarship. In this regard Hungarian literature has preserved many ambivalent features that go back to the early modern era. For example, only in very rare cases did Hungarian literature in the 18th century spread in non-folkloric ways. The author's research field is early modern popular poetry as an important means of communication, which he investigates from various aspects, including manuscripts, popular prints, as well as problems of orality. Transylvanian manuscripts can be regarded as an important forum for private literary communication. The 18th century is characterized by the coexistence of 16–17th century reflections and contemporary tastes. A statistical analysis of collections of popular poetry reveals that they were indicators of changes in literary tastes. Transylvanian Hungarian texts are markedly different; for example, in the 1830s Transylvanian variants of Csokonai's poems originating from before 1840 significantly differed from those found in other Hungarian regions. The present paper is an outline of such a research, drawing attention to changes in the repertoire of popular poetry as well as to Hungarian-Romanian textual parallels.
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The (new) Hungarian speaking literature was born at the „sentimentalist crossover of centuries”, among masses of versified name day greetings, sumptuous wedding and funeral poetry and translations. The three authors presented in this paper are all initiates in the use of literary symbols, they could very well be considered gate-keepers in Hungary and Transylvania, in the period of Enlightenment: József Sándorffy become familiar with poetry in pictures while studying in Vienna as a medical student, becoming later the main promoter of Hungarian theatre in Bihar. (But what would be then the so called phenomenon of „sándorffyzmus”?) After 35 years of wandering in Europe, the „poeta elegans”, Ábrahám Barcsay lives the life of a retired soldier in the southern lands of Transylvania, producing less and less poetry amidst non- Hungarian speaking people. And Domokos, a member of the extended Teleki family publishes his old and new poems, as well as versified greetings addressed to him as an autobiography in verses – as a present to himself. The compared analysis of poetic, symbol bearing systems also reveals important information on the poetry of the Enlightenment.
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During our researches we have come across an interesting act of Orczy Lőrinc, a writer categorized later as „conservative”: a complete translation he wrote on behalf of prince Rákóczi Ferenc II, dated March 7, 1745, as well as a fragment of Lőrinc Orczy`s translation in the prince`s Memories. 1745 is the year of the yas-cuman (an etnic group in Hungary) Redemptio: empress Maria Theresa has approved them to pay out 500 000 forints in order to regain their former privileges. Could we perhaps link these translations with the Redemptio, or is it just pure casualty? Lőrinc Orczy has applied in 1753 for a position as captain of the yas-cuman shire, a vacated position at that moment. On the 6th of October, 1756 he was named commander in chief for the yas-cuman army (consisting of 1000 cavalry soldiers), participating between December 1756 and May 1759 as yas-cuman captain in the Seven Years War.
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One of the first masterpieces of prose works discovering Transylvania in the Enlightenment era is Ferenc Kazinczy's Erdélyi levelek [Letters from Transylvania]. In 1816, on a tour with his daughter, Kazinczy visited the bigger towns and historical sights of Transylvania. When describing the land, he never tries to conceal his central role: he is the point of origin in the spaces of the towns and the country, it is through him that we see the Transylvanian environment. The paper tries to find the answer for how the subject creates his own narrative while describing Transylvania and how Transylvanian culture is shown and interpreted.
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In the last decade in the literary history a new claim emerged about the work of János Gyöngyössi: to be viewed from the composition of the reading public, in the context of the supposed literary success. „The reformed priest from Torda mentions about 70 names just in the titles of his poems. This fact stresses that he was in good relation with a vast part of Hungarian notabilities of Transylvania.” (Ferenc Bíró, 1995) In my paper I intend to refine this thought, formulated only hypothetically. Discussing his autobiography from 1767, the argumentation of his poems, his correspondence – which was published in a straggling way in different reviews at the beginning of the 20th Century – his social network can be firmly outlined. This social network has different layers, which I intend to show up by grasping the relations of kin, the clerical partnerships, the acquaintances among the former student colleagues and the Hungarian nobles of Transylvania. This research has the goal of depicting the work of an 18th Century poet-priest from the perspective of the ordered lyrical products. In my hypothesis the poet’s social capital was turned into a financial gain.
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Márton Bolla was one of the most important figures of the Piarist fathers who arrived to Cluj/Kolozsvár in 1776. He was in the first group of the Piarist fathers, the religious male order that took over the school in the town of Cluj/Kolozsvár after the Jesuits were forced to give it up. At first he taught poetics and rhetorics, afterwards he found his true vocation when he started teaching history. He was a conservative with a classical culture, he wrote poetry, had as his friend another Piarist, Miklós Révay, who was quite a good poet of his time. Bolla spent 23 years in the Transylvanian town: the best years of his life. He was 25 when he arrived and 48 when he left Cluj/Kolozsvár. As a teacher his ’masterpiece’ were his pupils, among them not only the ones he educated and taught at school but also his private students, among them sons of the elite families of that time. He wrote and published quite a few important books while in the town, poetry, dramatic work and history. As a man of classical culture appreciated works written in Latin, but as he was an artists and a man of much sensitivity, he also wrote and published poems in the vernacular: in Hungarian. Thus he was among those who opened a new direction for national literature.
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According to the treatises which deal with George Aranka’s texts, that propagate the Hungarian Language Protecting Society of Transylvania (the only scientific society which could be founded in the 18th century), are set into the context of those writings of the “academic movement” which have got similar topics. The members of the academic movement were Bessenyei, Batsányi and Samuel Decsy. These treatises highlight the accuracy of Aranka’s writings as his specialty. However, they don’t mention some problematic parts of Aranka’s essays. These points cannot be answered unambiguously by the analysis, which has got its root in the “academic movement”. The aim of this work is to create the context of the programme of Aranka, the Transylvanian polymath, in which the so called white spots will be understandable. I deal with the events of the 1790/91, the 1792 and the 1794/95 diet as primary sources proving that Aranka not only initiated the foundation of a scientific society but also he contributed to the significant questions and problems of the diets like the debate which is about having the Hungarian as official language accepted. He expresses his opinion during the conference which aim is to solve the problems of the three nations in Transylvania. He also talks about the problems of different nationalities inside Transylvania and about the question of the union.
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The subject of this study is the history of György Aranka’s correspondence as a special group of texts within the Aranka-collection, as well as the history of the almost two hundred years of research carried out on this text-corpus. Following the overview of previous research, I present the process through which, out of the great amount of information referring to the correspondence, at first a chronological repertoire was born, and then, as an end result, a complex database was formed, which, beside making systematization possible, allowed for search and study based on various criteria. While presenting the database I gave special attention to the stages of its design and structure: to determining the elements and structure of the data, establishing the fields, regulating the way these relate to each other, loading data into the database, and last, but not least, choosing the criteria for a complex search. With the statistics and indexes obtained with the help of the database I intended to demonstrate the significance of this correspondence in terms of the history of science and institutions, as well as to showcase the organization work carried out by György Aranka in the field of science in Transylvania during the age of the Enlightenment.
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