Drawing on a well-known distinction formulated by Hans-Robert Jauss, this paper approaches social history-informed studies in literary history as a provocation to literary studies. To this end, it reviews the traditions of Hungarian scholarship, while also noting the markedly different structuring of the field in German. It argues that this approach, which neither seeks nor has ever sought a hegemonic position, offers insights into the social uses of literature. Acknowledging the embeddedness of literature within cultural studies provides a useful, though in itself insufficient, foundation for this perspective, even as it is becoming increasingly widespread within the Hungarian institutional landscape. The study presents both arguments and examples to underscore the value of directing scholarly attention to the historical questions surrounding the production, publication, and distribution of literature. It concludes that this approach has by now yielded far more substantial results than would justify dismissing it as marginal. Yet, from the perspective of historiography, it is likely to receive sustained attention only from a (similarly marginal) segment of Hungarian scholars engaged in social-historical research.

Nincs absztrakt.

Nincs absztrakt.

This study revisits the career of Lajos Rhédey (1761–1831) using partially new archival evidence. Rhédey came from a Protestant gentry family and started a military career. Later he became a freemason, and in the 1790s he joined a group of individuals in Zemplén county who were initially renowned for their Francophile views and later further radicalised. Although Rhédey was not personally involved in the Jacobin plot in Hungary, he was investigated and fell out of grace at the Court. As the sources suggest, he conquered this unfavourable situation by buying his former position back with recruits and money offered to the monarch. From this point on, his behaviour is characterised by loyalty to the government and the Court, which earned him the title of a count as well as the administrative position of Royal Deputy of the Lord Lieutenant in Bihar County in 1808. Documents concerning his political career and eventful private life raise the question whether this can be justly considered a political volte-face, or that his life is an example for how views traditionally perceived as polar opposites (such as conservative views versus freemasonry; or his support for the Court in Vienna versus his support for Hungarian national theatre and culture) could actually exist side by side in this period. An interesting aspect of the biography is that most of the Rhédey material comes from the pen of Ferenc Kazinczy, an eminent writer of the age, who demonstrated an obvious disapproval towards Rhédey’s post-1880 career and consequently constructed the count’s portrait as an unsavoury counter-image of his own person. For this reason, it is important to achieve a more nuanced view by examining archival sources that are independent from Kazinczy. This study, the first such attempt to draw up the biographical outline of Rhédey, presents an important member of a political generation in which individuals were forced to adapt their life strategies to the turbulent actualities of revolution, Napoleonic wars and solidifying absolutism.

The study focuses on the publishing strategies of Mihály Csokonai Vitéz (1773–1805), the most significant Hungarian poet around the turn of the eighteenth century. In his correspondence and elsewhere, Csokonai made several references to the distribution of his own books of poetry, which suggest the extent to which Csokonai regarded the publication of his volumes as a business enterprise. Csokonai funded the publication of his books himself while seeking support from sponsors, however, he considered his income from his books as an investment in his forthcoming publications rather than personal income. For him publishing poetry was never a way to earn one’s living. The sporadic surviving evidence about publishing reveals that Csokonai’s most important readership was located around the two main centres of Protestant education and the Protestant market towns of the Great Plain. This pattern more or less corresponds to the area of the subsequent Csokonai cult. The study furthermore presents specific examples to illustrate ways to analyse the practice of writing, and the related social roles and prestige, in the study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature.

Nincs absztrakt.