ZSIGMOND KEMÉNY’S GYULAI PÁL: NOVEL AS SUBVERSION OF FORM
ZSIGMOND KEMÉNY’S GYULAI PÁL: NOVEL AS SUBVERSION OF FORM

Summary/Abstract: This article argues that Gyulai Pál, the first completed novel by Zsigmond Kemény, constitutes a new genre in the Hungarian literature of the 19th century. A blend of different genres (drama, narrative verse, epistle, diary, etc.), Gyulai Pál exposes the artificiality of literary representation by assimilating discordant styles into a structured unity. It comprises a collage of literary formulae that forms a meta-narrative about the production of literary discourse itself. The distinctiveness of this novel in the Hungarian literature of its time suggests that Kemény was influenced by works from the other literary traditions of Europe. Particularly relevant are the works of German romantics, who specifically characterized the novel as a blend of genres, a concept shaped largely by their reading of Don Quixote. Thus Gyulai Pál serves as an introduction into Hungarian literature of an approach to composition influenced by theoretical concepts from other literature of Europe. An investigation of Kemény’s critical writings on the novel suggests an explanation for his adoption of this approach. Kemény was convinced that his was an era troubled by moral ambivalence arising out of the diminishing authority of the church, an ambivalence not unlike the moral and theological uneasiness of the Renaissance. The article suggests that Kemény found in Don Quixote a genre capable of coping with these uncertainties.

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