Ilona Nagy: Introduction (Hungarian version)
Ilona Nagy: Introduction (English version)
Réka Nagy: The Life and Career of an "Intruding Writer" in the 20th Century
Problems and Possible Approaches of an Analysis Based on a Manuscript Legacy
In the 19–20th century, parallel with the spreading of writing, a new group of writers appeared in the working class and the peasantry: the intruding writers. The present paper refl ects on the problematic areas of research of this kind of material, on the different approaches and the peculiarities of this use of writing based on the research made on the written legacy of Miklós Szabó (1907–1982) from the county of Szilágyság [Sălaj, Romania].
In my essay, I would like to point out the textual parallelisms in 19th-century’s folklore and popular poetry, through a contemporary epic poem [The Gypsies of Nagyida] of János Arany. I tried to reveal such textual parallelisms and contact points, which – hopefully – can bring us closer to certain reworked text versions from the 19th century, belonging to the popular literature (chapbook literature) or to the fi ne literature, or having been created on the border of these two categories. On one hand, the study of these texts helps the discovery of the base texts of certain chapbook literature pieces of work, and on the other hand the exploration of the body text reworked by János Arany in The Gypsies of Nagyida could contribute to the recent research results showing his familiarity with the traditions of popular poetry.
In this article, the author presents a collection of previously-unresearched hand-written German manuscripts entitled Materialien zu ungarischen Sagen aus der Sammlung Georg Gaals. These are the only German-language fairy-tale manuscripts connected to Georg von Gaal, who published the first Hungarian fairy tale book in German in Vienna in 1822 with the title Mährchen der Magyaren. Havay investigated whether there is a relationship between the content of the manuscripts and the published book of tales. The manuscripts, which are kept in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books, had not been analyzed until now because they were written between 1819–1824 with Fraktur calligraphy in German. Havay has read these texts, transcribed them into modern Latin letters, and compared them with all of Georg von Gaal’s published and unpublished books and manuscripts in Hungarian and German. Havay found that among the manuscripts, there is no word-for-word identical tale with those in the book, but that one whole tale (Die Zwillinge) and one fragment (Vom weisen Peter) have the same content as two tales in the published Mährchen der Magyaren. In this article, Havay has published the full content of the manuscript collection, the dates when the twenty-five tales where translated from Hungarian, and one whole fairy tale transcription. She also brings to light two further points: within the manuscripts she found unknown translations of three dramas of András Dugonics (Hungarian writer, 1740–1818) as well as one note from the translator of the tale Die Zwillinge (a piece of metainformation), which is probably the first information about fairy-tale translation in Hungarian fairy-tale research history.
Literary-Folkloristic Examination and Analysis of a Text Group
The relationship of texts, their workings, their „life” is best described by the notion of text group, a term widely used in classical philology. Texts belong to the same group if there are part-whole relationships which connect them to each other. During the examination the migration of texts through time, various social classes, and genres is being followed by collecting varieties of individual text groups. The majority of texts comes from common poetry, which consists a transitional layer between folklore and elite literature. This area has not yet been thoroughly researched, so we can expect some new findings in folkloristics and in the science of literature as well. In this study we examine texts beginning with the line „Én vagyok a Petri gulyás...” using the methodology of István Rumen Csörsz and Imola Küllős. To make this primarily folklore disourseanalytic research more comprehensible, a table is presented, which shows the twenty-seven members of the text group in chronological order, displaying the process of formation and degradation of the text. Petri gulyás dala is a well known folk song that also has an art poetic version by the priest-poet Gergely Édes from the 1820s which is considered the first piece of Hungarian folk-based elite literature. The research revealed the fact that this poem has some common poetical origins, and immediately after written, it found its way to the song books, that is, to the popular level again. The text also appeared in paperbacks and in folklore collections as a genuine folk song. Its variations became mixed among each other, and, gradually losing their function they fell apart. Our study reveals this journey, pinpointing the sources that were mistakenly used, discussing some minor inaccuracies, and presenting the original poem of Gergely Édes on the Petri gulyás for the first time.
Additional Data on the Terminology of Hungarian Folk Riddles (1789–1935)
In the study of a folklore genre, terminology is always a central question. In the case of Hungarian folk riddles, ’találós kérdés’ is the term commonly used by scholars and informants as well from the first decades of the 20th century, but this term is seldom found in earlier sources. In this paper, I comment on the changing Hungarian terminology of folk riddles, drawing on data from various sources surveyed while compiling the anthology of 19th century Hungarian riddle texts. I touch upon the use of various terms common in 19th century sources, such as mese; találós mese; talány, rejtvény, rejtély; találós kérdés.
Ruth B. Bottigheimer: Fairy-Tale Origins, Fairy-Tale Dissemination, and Folk
Narrative Theory
Ingo Schneider: Multidisciplinary Interests in Narratives and the Diversity of Narrative
Theories
Eleonora Sava – Maria Candale: Another Look at Ethnological Texts. Paradigms in
Dialogue
Anna Szakál: On the Margin of the Publication of a Folk Tale Collection.
Vót, hol nem vót. Moldvai csángó népmesék. (Once Upon a Time. Moldavian
Csángó Folk Tales.) Ed. Erzsébet Zakariás. Illustrated by Csaga Salat-Zakariás.
Koinónia, Cluj, 2009.
“I can only advise the youths, as well, not to believe anyone of great authority. Look at
it, verify it!”
Vilmos Keszeg speaks with Katalin Olosz
Authors (Hungarian version)
Authors (English version)
