“Funeral oration and prayer” – From the 12th century to the present

Abstract

This study is a representative text written as part of the project “Hungarian Literary Culture in a Transcultural Perspective”. It aims to convey to readers versed in other cultures the effects of the first complete text in the Hungarian language, the “Funeral Oration and Prayer” (Halotti Beszéd és Könyörgés), as an element of the living literary tradition manifesting in writing and reading. The study consists in a commented and annotated version of the basic text that will serve as a basis for the chapters adapted to the specificities of the different language versions of the book. The text gives a brief overview of 12th century Hungarian texts, and then introduces several 20th century Hungarian poems that share as their precursor the “Funeral Oration and Prayer”.