Traces of polish in the publications of the Classicist period

Particularly in the Aurora. Hazai Almanach pocket-books

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to emphasise previously less discussed connections within the discourse of csinosodás (in the sense of “beautification”), which are not only important backgrounds for the textual traces of polish from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, but also shed light on numerous details concerning Aurora, an exceptionally important pocket-book poetry series from the first half of the nineteenth century. This is also an expansion of the related intertextual inquiry in Hungarian research which has been going on for some time and still continues. The current paper, then, also intends to contribute to these expert activities with its array of quotations, comprising a chapter in the “short anthology” of beautification. The essay first explores the related European conditions, and then performs a large-scale content analysis in internet-based textual databases, exploring constellations and correlations in Hungarian texts on beautification. The conclusion is based on a comparison between my results and previous critical opinions, touching upon the limits and capacities of the given discourse in Hungary.